


50 Move Rule

by daphnerunning



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: (The Tachibana/Fuji is really brief), M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:42:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 9
Words: 25,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26415850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daphnerunning/pseuds/daphnerunning
Summary: One week until he knows if it's worked. One week until he knows if it was all for nothing, being a blind, helpless invalid at the mercy of the one person he never wanted to see him that way.Post-Shinpuri, only "spoilers" for Two Wings stuff. Chitose goes through an operation to restore his right eye. Things don't go quite as planned, and Tachibana winds up taking care of him for a week, as infinite possibilities spiral out from every interaction, even when no one makes a move.
Relationships: Chitose Senri/Tachibana Kippei, Fuji Shuusuke/Tachibana Kippei
Comments: 7
Kudos: 16





	1. Wednesday | Nine Years Old

**Wednesday**

“Hey. Are you awake? Can you hear me?”

“You should try to eat something. Can you sit up?”

“Shh, it’s fine. Don’t cry. I’ll get more of the pills.”

“Senri. Can you hear me?”

“Stop fucking around, I know you can hear me!”

“Just a little broth. Not even a noodle.”

“Please. Say you hear me.”

It’s the _please_ that wakes him finally, or maybe just makes him realize he’s been awake all along, but unable to do anything, to move, to bother knowing who he is. The world spins and tilts, until gravity asserts itself again, and the floor is underneath the ceiling. At least, Chitose assumes he’s lying on some sort of horizontal surface, which is somewhat parallel to the floor, which is parallel and beneath the ceiling, but assumptions are dangerous things. For example, he’d assumed he was alone, but the way the bed dips near his hips on one side, someone’s sitting there, bending the gravity of the room around themselves with their sheer presence.

Not just someone.

“Kippei.” The word comes out a breathy croak. “What...where...?”

Tachibana’s hands grip his shoulders suddenly, as hot as if they’d been resting in a fireplace, or maybe he’s just cold inside. “Chitose?” comes the hurried growl, so nervous it’s almost ferocious. That’s nice, that Tachibana still sounds like that. Chitose hasn’t heard him that upset in a long time. “You’re awake? You can hear me?”

“I...yes,” Chitose finally says, because what else is there? “Am I...” He trails off, sensing the different pathways the sentence could take, but unwilling to step foot on any of them, afraid of what he might find.

“At home.”

Well, that’s one question answered, anyway.

Tachibana’s hands slide off of his shoulders, and Chitose wants to protest. He doesn’t. The handprints, colder now than the rest of his body, still feel as if something is pressing on them. “I don’t remember,” he admits.

Tachibana’s breath is noisy. It always has been. Chitose used to tease that he could find Tachibana in a field at night with no moon, just by the sound of his breathing. _“I could find you even if I were blind,”_ he’d teased, and Tachibana had always given him a weird look, responding, _“Don’t you mean if you were blindfolded?”_

He sucks in a breath now, the air harsh as it moves into his throat, then forcibly out. Chitose wonders, vaguely, if he’s inhaling the air that Tachibana had exhaled. He has to be. Principle of Diffusion. Science is fine when it’s math, the mysteries of the world not solved by numbers, but disassembled into their component values. Notating and observing something changes it, by necessity. Chitose has always thought he might be a very large electron, forced to be a particle instead of a wave whenever Tachibana is looking at him.

“Hey,” he says, as conversationally as he can manage. “Kippei. Why am I blindfolded?”

“...The operation didn’t go perfectly.” Tachibana’s voice is low, obviously as gentle as he can make it. How unnecessary. Those words would have caused Chitose’s stomach to turn over, the nausea sinking through him, whether Tachibana had whispered or shouted or sang them at the top of his lungs.

“...It didn’t work,” he says, hearing his own voice come out flat.

“They don’t know yet. They said...your eye wasn’t ready to focus yet. That it kept trying to sync with the left eye, so they had to induce blindness in that one, too. Just temporarily.”

“Oh.” Look at that, a whole word without freaking out.

“Just temporarily,” Tachibana says again, as if that was the part that was so wrong. “A few days. Then they’ll be able to see if the operation worked. Chitose...”

 _You called me Senri when I couldn’t wake up_ , Chitose thinks, detached. “Hmm?”

“You should have told me.”

Whenever Tachibana tries to hold something in, it comes out in a fierce rush of air. Chitose feels it now, as if that exhalation has caused a breeze in the still room. “Why?” he asks bleakly, and then frowns behind the soft cloth. “Hey. What are you doing here?” It had felt natural, at first, to wake up with Tachibana by his side. But it isn’t natural, not for them. Not anymore.

“You invited me. You told me to come down on Thursday, because you would have something to show me.”

Thursday, what a strange concept. “That doesn’t sound like something I would do,” Chitose lies airily. “Is it Thursday, then?”

“No. I showed up on Tuesday. And your family told me you were in the hospital, having surgery.”

Chitose ponders that. “What day is today?”

“Wednesday.” He can almost _hear_ the way Tachibana’s lips press together, his brows drawn close, the way they do when he’s upset. Of all the times not to have his sight... “Your parents had to get Miyuki to her new school. They said they’ll be gone for a week.”

Chitose hears himself start to laugh, and presses a hand to his mouth, trying to stop it when it feels like it might verge on the hysterical. “Oh,” he manages again, shoulders trembling with the effort of holding it in. “That absolute brat.”

“What? Who?”

Chitose is silent, except for the little giggles that manage to escape. If he’s quiet enough, sometimes, _sometimes_ , Tachibana can pick up on a hint.

It takes so long that he starts laughing again, this time at Tachibana, by the time he hears the gruff, “You didn’t text me to come down, did you?”

“No~ope. Miyuki must have stolen my phone.” Chitose sighs, or tries to, when the motion makes him start hiccuping with laughter again. “She’ll never get a good husband at this rate. Ah--“ The act of squeezing his eyes shut suddenly sends sharp pangs through his body, and he feels the blood drain from his face, the pain quashing his mirth immediately.

“Do you need more pills?” Tachibana sounds as though this might be the first time in his life he’s seen pills, and he’s fairly sure all pills are the same. How cute.

“Have you been giving me pills?” Chitose asks, voice rough with the sudden spikes of pain that keep roiling through him. “No, just water. Why...why did the hospital send me back with you, anyway?”

The bed shifts. Tachibana is moving, and all too soon, that dip of gravity in the bed where he’d been sitting, disrupting the springs and Chitose’s sense of calm and the universe itself, suddenly disappears. _No. Come back. Even if I can’t see you..._

A glass presses against Chitose’s lips, and he realizes only then that he’s sitting propped up on pillows, at an angle that lets him drink some of the water provided. He sips, feels the welcome moisture on his dry lips, and sighs. “That’s good, thank you.”

“They discharged you to your family,” Tachibana says, and Chitose tries to picture it. Is Tachibana leaning over him? Is he sitting in a chair next to the bed? Does he look patient, or is he looming? For a guy of medium height, he certainly has a _loom_ to him, when he wants to. “You were acting pretty lucid. I showed up right when you went in.”

“Two days early.” Chitose hadn’t missed that. “Ahh, how did I wind up with a friend who likes to be two days early to anything? Never mind the fact that I never invited you.”

Tachibana ignores that. “Don’t be so obnoxious. I got the text that said to come down to Kyushu on Thursday. Thought I might as well see my grandparents while I was down, but they were busy this weekend, so I came early. Not everything revolves around you, Chitose.”

“Nothing revolves around me.” The words are definite, a law of the universe. “You have to stay in one place for anything to revolve around you.”

“...Weirdo.”

If Chitose strains, he can hear the ghost of Kyushu-ben in Tachibana’s voice, the lilt of _bai_ and _tai_ and _batten_ struggling to come through the proper Kantou rounded vowels. It’s even more jarring when he’s just gotten used to the way his team speaks, rapid-fire _yayayayaya_ constantly, charmingly incomprehensible for the better part of a year until it suddenly clicked into place, but the eager casual cadence has never made its way into his own speech.

Tokyo, though, seems to have an obvious hold on the diction of Tachibana Kippei.

“Is this the first time you’ve been down?” he hears himself asking, and feels his hands tangle in the sheets at his sides. “Since...”

“...Yeah.” There’s a soft rustling sound. Is Tachibana shifting uncomfortably? Rubbing his hand over his hair? How long is it now? Chitose hasn’t seen him since the World Tournament, almost eight months earlier.

When Tachibana doesn’t say anything else, Chitose is forced to simply repeat that last _Yeah_ in his mind, three or four hundred times.

Always, always, the pressure to make a move weighs on him. Nothing is ever simple between them. Even when it had been easy, it hadn’t been simple. Back then, he’d enjoyed the dance, the aching hunger that he was sure one day, one day, would be sated at last. It had been a game--if I push _this_ way, will you come back at me? Will you go _that_ way, or will you move the same way, to head me off? If I go right, will you go to your right, or to mine? At least once, in a lifetime of dancing, they would have to both go the same way.

He’d been so sure of that.

“Eat something,” Tachibana finally says, and Chitose knows the silence has gotten to him. It always did.

He flaps a hand. “Fine. A granola bar, maybe?”

Tachibana snorts. “You’ll eat the nabe I made and you’ll like it.”

“Nabe? Is that what I’m smelling?” He smells broth, maybe. He more smells Tachibana, the cotton of his clothes, the woodsy scent of his deodorant, the tang of sweat in the balmy August island air.

“Yeah. Let me grab you a bowl.”

“What kind of meat?” Chitose calls, unable to tell how far Tachibana has already gotten. To the door? Down the hall? Suddenly, a week of this seems intolerable. The doctors had been so sure this operation would fix everything at last. _And when will I learn that the only people who are always wrong are the ones who are so certain?_

“Pork tripe,” Tachibana calls back.

“In _August?_ ” Chitose complains. “Who would want motsunabe in August? You hate me and you want me to boil.”

Footsteps are the only clue when Tachibana comes back in, followed by the sudden waft of smell that makes Chitose’s mouth water. Apparently, he very much wants motsunabe in August. The tang of nira garlic chives mixed with the cabbage, broth, and pork tripe, simmered with red chilis in broth, is enough to make his stomach send up a growl louder than an engine turning over.

Tachibana lets out a snort. “Open up.”

An odd, nervous flutter seizes Chitose’s heart. “You’re not. You’re not going to feed me.”

“You think you can feed yourself? Take the spoon from my hand, then.”

Anger surges, hot and fast, never far below the surface of desolation or the lid of breezy indifference Chitose always keeps in place. With a supreme effort of will, he paints a fake little smile on his face. “You’re _so_ mean to me,” he reiterates with a sigh, and contemplates fumbling his way to the window to jump out of it. Just what he’s always wanted, to be the blind invalid Tachibana gives up his time to care for. This isn’t his worst nightmare come true or anything.

He won’t jump out of the window. It’s only the second floor, after all. With his luck, he wouldn’t even manage to break his long neck, and would probably just double-cripple himself.

With the utmost sweetness, he opens his mouth, and lets Tachibana spoon tripe into it.

**9**

The first time he cooks for Senri, Kippei is nine years old, and it’s winter. “Dad lets me use the gas burner by myself,” he brags, poking at the pot with a long slotted spoon, watching the noodles drop into the broth.

Senri leans up on his tiptoes to stare at the pot, his face creasing into a radiant, delighted smile. “It smells really good, Kippei! You’re a better cook than my mom!”

Kippei feels his chest puff out with pride. “Mom’s been really busy with An-chan and the Housewife Alliance, so I’ve been making dinner,” he says, and fishes out a couple of bowls, carefully setting them down and fetching the big ladle. “Plus, if I make dinner, Mom says I can play tennis until _nine-thirty_.”

Senri’s face lights up even further, until he’s almost glowing with pleasure. “I’ll help by enjoying this champon,” he says, and as usual, Kippei can’t tell if he’s joking or not.

Senri makes little happy noises when he eats, and for some reason, that makes Kippei’s face feel hot tonight. It’s probably the broth, warming him from the inside, and not the way Senri’s knee bumps against his under the kotatsu. “I’ll cook you something for your birthday,” he says suddenly. “As long as you play tennis with me. What do you want?”

Senri laughs, and swallows a mouth full of sprouts. “What I always want. Us to play tennis together forever.”

“I can’t make that in the kitchen for your birthday!”

Senri’s hair is weird. It’s wild and kinky and thick, and Kippei often thinks that if he stuck his hand into it, he wouldn’t be able to pull it free. “All I want are things Kippei can’t give me, though.”

Kippei is nine, and he has no words for how lonely and frustrated those words make him feel.


	2. Wednesday | Six Years Old

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning for some child abuse in this chapter.

**Wednesday**

The room is dark, maybe. Chitose’s bedroom feels weirdly unfamiliar when he can’t see it, when he knows someone else has been inside of it. Had Tachibana moved things around? Had he turned over papers, shuffled through Chitose’s things like he had when they were kids? Chitose wonders vaguely if he’d found the Tennis Weekly magazines buried under his porn, a shock value smoke screen to keep anyone from talking about something that actually matters.

Slowly, trying not to panic when spots burst behind the blindfold, Chitose hauls himself up to sitting. His head throbs, and he feels his pulse in his eyeballs. That’s probably...fine. Six more days. Six days until he knows if it’s worked. Six days until he knows if it was all for nothing, being a blind, helpless invalid at the mercy of the one person he never wanted to see him as one.

God, how is he going to stand six days?

He hadn’t been able to find his phone, groping around the bedside table. Even if he had, he’d need Tachibana to dial for him, and then what? Call his parents and beg them to come home, to leave Miyuki when she needs them, all because he was the idiot that risked everything on an experimental procedure?

Yeah, so far High School isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The thought makes him grunt, and he pushes himself up to standing, only to nearly pass out when the blood in his body seems to rearrange itself. He finds himself sitting back on the bed, panting harshly, sweat trickling down into his blindfold.

“Chitose? What the hell?”

Footsteps. Loud. Tachibana’s hands on his shoulders. Hot. “What are you doing?” Tachibana demands. “Bed rest, I told you! That means resting in bed?”

He doesn’t need to jump out the window, he just needs a frying pan to hit this idiot with. Or maybe a lovely little bottle of poison, whether for himself or for Tachibana. “That’s all well and good,” he gets out, as pleasantly as he can when he can only think of death. “But unless you’re going to shove a catheter into me, I’m going to _need_ the toilet. Soon.” _Really_ soon, as if speaking the words aloud had pissed his bladder off.

“Fuck. Right. Hold on.”

Tachibana’s arms suddenly slide under his legs, and Chitose tenses, letting out a nervous little sound, stupid to his own ears. “Kippei, don’t--“

“Do you have to go or not?”

“...I...” _Hate this I hate this I hate this why couldn’t you do this for a good reason, not because I can’t even take care of myself, hate this I hate this!_

“You’re such a shitty sick person,” Tachibana grumbles. His chest is against Chitose’s ear, his voice deep and resonant, arms strong around Chitose’s body. It feels as if he weighs nothing, given how little Tachibana is obviously straining to lift him. Maybe he does. Maybe weight is determined by potential, and all of his has drained away, and Tachibana has taken all of that density into himself.

“You weigh a fucking ton,” Tachibana grunts, and dispels that odd fancy. “It’s your legs. It’s those weird heavy geta you wear, where did you even get those?”

“Nana.”

“Ah. Yeah. Should have known.”

Anything weird, they can blame on his grandmother. As far as Chitose is concerned, she’s perfect.

Tachibana bends, and Chitose’s bare feet touch the ground. Instantly, he feels gravity shift, his head up above his feet, Tachibana not supporting him. What’s the point of revolving around the sun instead of Tachibana?

Then Tachibana puts his hand on the waistband of Chitose’s shorts, and Chitose smacks him without a second’s hesitation, accurate even without sight.

“Ow! Hey! I’m helping!”

“I can feel where that is!” Chitose snarls, and gives a push towards where he thinks Tachibana’s shoulders might be, aims wrong, and shoves him awkwardly in the chin. Stupid short Tachibana. “Get out, I can do this part!”

“I’m _helping_ ,” Tachibana says again, and for a wild second, Chitose thinks Tachibana is going for his waistband again. There’s a weird moment of disconnect--is this _it_? Is this the moment the Black King finally topples, when a knight comes out of fucking nowhere? Has Tachibana finally made a move, in the stupidest possible way at the worst possible time?

Chitose realizes, after a few long minutes, that he can only hear his own breathing, not Tachibana’s. He reaches out, but his hand encounters nothing.

Just him, alone in the bathroom, clutching his elastic waistband and wavering uncertainly on his feet, then.

 _I should have just pissed the bed_ , he thinks miserably, groping backward for the toilet.

After the sound of the flush, he hears footsteps again. “You want to shower while you’re up?” Tachibana asks brusquely.

Chitose seriously considers just going another week without showering. His head aches as if it’s about to be split open, and the idea of falling like this--or worse, Tachibana helping him shower--makes his gorge rise. “Irony is really funny sometimes, isn’t it?”

“Do you want to shower, or not?”

The edge of anger in Tachibana’s voice is familiar and alien all at the same time. It isn’t as if he’s never heard Tachibana shout before. His temper has always been famous, around Kumamoto. It’s not as if he’s never heard Tachibana shout at _him_ before, either, though those situations were always rare. Usually, when he’s heard that tone of voice, he’d been sighing, giggling behind his hand, because some dumb first-year is about to _get it now_ for slacking off or goofing around during practice.

There were other times, sure. But he’d usually been riling Tachibana up on purpose, trying to get him to this point. Trying to see if he could. Trying to see if Tachibana had it in him, to get _that_ angry at him, his best friend, his soon-to-be vice-captain, his doubles partner. Trying to see if he was special enough to escape the famous wild wrath.

It was always a bad game. Yeah, Tachibana has it in him. And maybe he’s not quite as special as he’d like to be.

The thought makes him angry, irrationally so, so he smiles. “I think I do want to shower,” he says, a hint of challenge in his voice as he dares Tachibana to refuse him. _Go on. Get nervous. Run away. Hell, run back to Tokyo, where you end your sentences with_ desu _and your questions with_ ka _, and everyone thinks you’re tough-but-fair._

Is Tachibana frowning? Is he nervous? No, no. Tachibana never got nervous in the changing rooms, stripping down without hesitation, as if he was never afraid his gaze would stray where it wasn’t welcome. He’d never balked at skinny dipping just the two of them, either, letting out whoops of delight and defiance as they’d plunged into the ocean no matter the time of year. It’s Chitose that always feels the need to make sure, make _sure_ he isn’t looking too long, make _sure_ to have excuses ready.

Not making a move isn’t the same thing as being still.

Lost in his own thoughts, Chitose hardly hears the water start, but he feels the steam waft over his face once it gets hot.

“Like you said,” Tachibana’s voice says, and Chitose would have broken every racquet he owns in half to see the expression on his face. “You know where your pants are. You’re not expecting me to undress you, are you?”

Hmm.

This would have been easier five minutes ago, when he was angry and sick. Now, with Tachibana’s low rough voice talking about undressing him, Chitose fumbles for those feelings of distance, apathy, and above all, a lack of arousal.

With little of his usual grace, he tugs the shirt off over his head, letting it fall to a heap on the floor. He doesn’t pause before adding his shorts--can’t, it would be admitting _far_ too much--and they hit the ground, too, along with his underwear, with a grimace of distaste. “Didn’t really think about it, but I guess I’ve been wearing those since Tuesday.”

“You didn’t have to wear a gown with an open butt?”

“Not for _eye_ surgery, you can wear the gown over your clothes.”

Tachibana’s hand makes contact with his arm, and Chitose jumps. “Warn me,” he hisses. “I can’t see what you’re doing!”

“I can’t see, either!”

“Huh?”

There’s a pause, then Tachibana explains, “I’m gonna take your blindfold off so you can shower. So I turned off the lights.”

“...You’re a moron,” Chitose says, and suppresses the urge to jump him. Attempt 734, success. It’s a streak of 734, an all-time record. “I’ll just keep them closed. You’re no help if you can’t see.”

“But if you open them--“

“Kippei, I’m tired, my head hurts, and I stink,” Chitose says wearily. “Just turn the light on. I’ll keep my eyes closed. I’ve gone this far, I’m not about to fuck it up from impatience now.”

For a moment, he can’t hear Tachibana breathe. Then, hands are at his head, untying the blindfold, and Chitose grits his teeth. “Warn me,” he repeats patiently, “before you touch me. I can’t tell it’s coming.”

Tachibana doesn’t pause in his work, untying the knot, unwinding the cloth from his face. “You’re right,” he says, and it doesn’t seem like it’s the last statement he’s answering. “You’ve already gone too far.”

There’s a long, weighty silence. Chitose shifts, moving a foot to brush it against the edge of the tub, and raises his leg, feeling wobbly and unbalanced as he gets inside. Spots burst painfully behind his eyelids, and his breath hitches from the pain as he climbs under the water’s spray. Even the pressure of stray droplets against his eyelids hurts, and he keeps his eyes not only shut, but squeezed tightly closed the entire time.

He fumbles, then says quietly, “I don’t know where the soap is.”

“Here.”

Chitose is ready for the touch this time, but that doesn’t make it any easier to bear. Tachibana has always touched easily, affectionate as he is violent inside, quick to run a hand through his hair or throw the first punch, always ready to grab him for a hug or throw someone to the ground for being a dickhead. Those warm hands touch his now, and even if he’s expecting it, he still doesn’t feel ready. It’s hardly intimate, having a bar of soap pressed into his palm, but if he’s imaginative and pathetic (he is, and he is), he can pretend Tachibana is holding his hand, just for a moment.

Chitose washes himself in silence. At one point, Tachibana leans into the shower to hand him shampoo, the special kind his grandmother buys for their shared hair type, and Chitose feels the bare skin of Tachibana’s muscled forearm brush against his chest. He turns quickly to the wall, hiding the motion as he washes his hair, heart thundering in his chest. Bare skin--was Tachibana wearing short sleeves, or had he taken off his shirt to better help him shower? God, as if it weren’t hard enough to keep his thoughts on track.

He dips his head down automatically to check, but fuck, no, he can’t see, can’t risk opening his eyes. Moving his hand down to check whether he’s hard would just be _obvious_ , so he ignores the question resolutely.

Why couldn’t it have gone right? Why couldn’t the procedure just have been a success? Sure, it wasn’t a hundred percent, still experimental, but why couldn’t it have just _worked_? Because things that seem too good to be true are usually lies? Or because the gods think it’s funny to punish cowards for finally sucking up their courage?

“Chitose?”

Tachibana’s voice is quiet, not much louder than the shower.

“Hm?”

“You haven’t moved in a while. You done?”

All at once, Chitose feels desperately, painfully exhausted, his body attempting to shut down unnecessary functions to help himself heal. He nods. and a moment later, the water shuts off, and a towel is thrust against his chest. He doesn’t even complain when Tachibana carries him, still naked, back to his room and sets him on the bed.

It must just be that the irony was too much for fate to pass up, Chitose decides. Tachibana, holding him, nude in strong arms--god, it doesn’t even feel like Tachibana has to work to lift him like that, and Chitose knows he’s heavy. Of course it would happen like this. Of course it would be in the way he’d least wanted, that makes his skin crawl with revulsion instead of heating with desire.

 _I get it, Fate_ , he thinks despairingly. _I’m a coward, and I’m being punished, right? How many moves into our long game is this?_

Soft cloth hits his lap. “Might be easier for you to wear a yukata,” Tachibana suggests.

“Eating Kippei’s nabe, wearing my yukata--are you trying to make me think we’re twelve again?” The words are flippant. As if there were anything he wouldn’t do for a do-over of those last few years. Well, not the whole timespan, but certainly a choice minute here or there.

He smooths his hands over the cloth, just as Tachibana says, “Wait, I--I’m going to touch you.”

Oh.

He _had_ asked Tachibana to warn him. He just hadn’t expected the phrase to have such an effect. It’s so close, so _close_ to what he wants (want is the wrong word, but language fails him on this point, math is closer, Tachibana touching him is some sort of quantum theory for sure), that he doesn’t flinch, just lets Tachibana wind the blindfold around his head again, securing it with a firm little tug.

“There,” comes the voice, so close Chitose clenches his hands in the fabric of the yukata, “Now nothing bad can happen.”

Water drips from Chitose’s hair, no matter how he’s toweled it. Despite the warmth of the day, his shoulders are freezing. “Oh, good,” he says, and hears an echo in his own voice. “Wouldn’t want something bad to happen to my eyes. That would really suck.”

He hears the silence change. For a moment, a dizzy, nauseous moment, he thinks he’s about to feel Tachibana’s fist collide with some part of him, some soft and delicate part he hadn’t thought to protect. Maybe he tenses. Maybe not. Either way, the next sound he hears is footsteps, and then the closing of his bedroom door.

**6**

Kippei is six the first time he hears the phrase “anger problem” applied to himself, and he doesn’t think it’s his fault. Matsuo Shinsuke, who sits next to him in first grade, had deliberately cut in line for the big slide, and Kippei had been waiting _patiently_. He can’t quite remember what had changed in his mind, but he remembers the red haze, and how good it had felt to grab Matsuo and punch him in the stomach. The other boy had fallen down and made a funny, choking noise--Kippei knows he’s stronger than most of the boys, they’ve wrestled enough--and Kippei had stood over him, not sure why it felt like he should keep hitting Matsuo until he cried.

Nakamura-sensei had pulled him off by the back of his collar, lifting him into the air and whacking him over the head. Later, Kouchou-sensei had lectured him for half an hour (it felt longer, the lesson doesn’t make any sense, why should he let someone get away with doing whatever?), and his father had taken him home early.

His father is angry. That, according to the adults who will talk to him later, is not a problem. It’s only when it’s him, when Matsuo is in his face and he has to _do_ something about it, that it’s a problem. When his father’s hand collides with his face, when he feels his father’s foot in his stomach, when a big hand grabs his hair to pull him upright just to hit him again, that’s not a problem. That’s discipline. That’s training, as his mother tells him later, and she doesn’t look concerned as she puts a bandage on his forehead from where he’d hit the wall, so he isn’t too concerned, either.

Later, his father has him sit at the table. His parents and An eat. His stomach hurts, his face hurts, his arm hurts, his scalp hurts, his butt hurts, and there’s no food at his place, but no one says anything. Neither does he. Later still, his father pats him on the head, and he’s six years old, and already knows better than to flinch.

“You didn’t cry,” his father says. “That’s good. Being a man means accepting the way things are.”

An sneaks a sausage roll into his room that night, four years old and certain she’s solved the problem. Kippei keeps the lights off, so she doesn’t see the wetness on his face.

The next day, Nakamura-sensei rearranges the room. Instead of Matsuo, Kippei finds himself sitting next to Chitose Senri. He has skin like barley tea and hair like seaweed, but he smells like--

For whatever reason, Kippei is sure that Chitose Senri smells like the wind in spring.

After recess, he finds himself looking at the wall, where the English teacher had helped them to write basic facts on little paper hearts, and stuck them up with pushpins. With some pride, he realizes his English is better than Senri’s.

Name: KIPPEI

Birthday: AGUST 15

Family: MATHAR FATHAR AN

I like: TENIS ANDO FOOD

Favorite color: BLOU

Name: Se NRi

Birthday: D 31

Family: mA bA NANA bAby

I like: テニス

Favorite Color: yeRo

“You like tennis?”

The words come from behind him. Chitose Senri, apparently, moves quietly. Or he just wasn’t paying attention. “Yeah,” Kippei says, and he’s not sure who smiles first, him or Senri.


	3. Thursday | Thirteen Years Old

**Thursday**

Chitose wakes up hard.

He’s not sure why, except probably that he’s fifteen and it’s pretty much like this every day. He lays still, curled onto his side where he’d been sleeping, feeling the blood pulse through him, signaling him that he has to _do_ something, he has to touch, has to be touched, it’s criminal that he isn’t being touched. Odd, prickling energy arcs through his skin wherever he’s touching fabric, concentrating heat around his nipples and his cock, making his lips tingle as if someone is about to kiss him, making him ache for that touch that isn’t coming.

The sounds are quiet, and at first, Chitose isn’t sure what he’s hearing. Then it comes again, drifting in on the wind from the open window. Tachibana is staying in the guest room, right above his own room. Chitose had figured out quickly that meant he could, if he tried, hear Tachibana snoring.

He’s not snoring now.

Tachibana, apparently, _has_ found his porn, or at least his DVDs. Chitose recognizes the familiar strain of “My Maid Is A Good Girl,” the two female voices blending together in teasing, nervous, delighted tones. Tachibana had asked him, once, why he’d preferred to watch movies of lesbians instead of straight couples. He hadn’t even needed to lie, just shade the truth, saying that watching men fuck just made him jealous to do it himself. Tachibana had, obnoxiously, laughed and taken it at face value, shaking his head. He’d also started stealing Chitose’s DVDs.

Chitose breathes, and tries not to listen. He knows the movie well enough by now. He tries not to listen underneath the movie, for the sounds of skin on skin, soft sounds of clothing rustling that might make him want to rip off his blindfold and climb out the window, up to the guest room, and knock away Tachibana’s hand, replacing it with--

His hand steals down between his thighs, parting the yukata, and god, he’s so hard already. That happens most mornings, but most mornings he doesn’t have Tachibana upstairs. _The wind works both ways_ , he reminds himself. Tachibana could just as easily hear him.

He wraps a hand around his cock, pressing his cheek down into the pillow. His ears have always been good. His imagination is better. The sounds of the not-very-industrious maid cleaning her mistress’s boots aren’t nearly so arousing as what he imagines--or hears? He might, _might_ be hearing skin rub softly against wet skin, Tachibana’s breath hitching with every drag of his own hand. He _might_ be hearing soft panting breaths. It’s hard to say, with the blindfold on, just how much of it is real and how much is imagined.

Until he’s on the verge, and in his mind’s ear, Tachibana whispers his name.

That’s imagination for sure.

But he’s always had a good imagination, and it drives him over the edge, fake or no, until he’s spilling thickly into his palm, head buzzing, nipples tingling, wishing vaguely that he’d made a production out of it and fingered himself stupid so he’d be aching afterwards.

In a haze of sated lust, embarrassment, and slowly throbbing pain, Chitose drifts. The wind doesn’t bring him any more sounds; Tachibana must have turned the movie off, himself done with his morning duty as well. Before too long, he hears the sound of a tennis match coming through the window. The Western & Southern Open, probably, if he doesn’t have his dates wrong. Zverev is doing well, it sounds like.

It was supposed to just...click.

He’d always been sure that it would.

Was that naive? Maybe. But there are a lot of things it’s impossible to force. Every time he thinks he’s learned his lesson, it turns out he’s just delayed it for a while, shoved it off onto something else, some other idiocy. He’d been so sure he’d made his peace with his loss of vision, and his future being ripped away from him. Then they’d lost their advancement match--his fault, he knows, Tachibana can’t watch both sides of the court and he can’t even watch his own--and he’d heard about this procedure. Tried to force his way well again, and look where that had landed him.

If he’d been able to take Tachibana’s hand on the court, if they’d stood in the shower together, if Tachibana had spooned tripe into his mouth, and nothing had happened, neither of them had made a move...

There was supposed to be time.

His thoughts are disjointed, he knows. He hadn’t taken the pills, but there’s enough pain to make him feel hazy, to make it feel like it might just be fine to drift from one thought to another. He’s a bad invalid, always has been, either lying to his family that he’s already well again or simply sneaking out of his room, unable to bear the thought of being cooped up any longer, only returning when he’s run-down and sicker than ever.

Some things can’t be forced.

The spark was supposed to catch.

He’d been _certain_. Nana had promised, she’d read it in his birthday and his palms. At some point, she’d promised, if it was meant to be, that spark he always felt burning under his skin would catch, and neither of them would be able to resist the flame.

Only it never did.

Now maybe it’s too late. Maybe they’ve just grown apart too much. Nana had said it would happen when they were both chasing the same dream, after all, and that feels like a lifetime ago.

His feet itch. It’s time to leave, to wander the streets and forget who he is, to find a hungry cat and walk with it for a while until he finds a food stall selling fish, to walk onto the first train he sees with an open door.

“Hey. You hungry?”

The voice startles him so much he seizes up, and only realizes belatedly that he’s kicked his covers off, and his legs are askew, hand between his thighs, his mess mostly dry on his palm. The sudden motion to roll over drives a spike of pain into his head, and he clenches his jaw shut on a whimper.

“Chitose?” The voice is closer now, concerned. Maybe Tachibana hadn’t seen. Fuck, how embarrassing.

“I’m fine,” he grits out, shoving his face into the pillow for a moment, just until the pounding recedes. “I...yeah, I could eat.”

“I made ikinari dango.”

“Eh? You did? When?” Chitose demands, head turning as if he’s going to see something.

“Started them last night. I’ll go steam them now. Just...you want me to put something on the TV?”

Chitose’s mouth twists. “Like?”

It’s a challenge, a dare. _Do you remember the right answer? Do you dare?_

“The Western & Southern Open is on,” Tachibana says, giving the right answer. “Zverev is up two games.”

“...Go ahead.”

Tachibana flips the TV on, and his footsteps retreat. Half an hour later, he returns, and gravity shifts, the bed dipping to allow his weight. Chitose feels, dizzy as he is, that he could tumble into the bend of the springs and never hit the ground, circling slowly around Tachibana until he hits the center of the black hole. That’s the nature of shadow around light, always clinging to the thing that could erase it. Shadows are stupid.

“I’m gonna set a plate on the bed,” Tachibana says, then ruins the careful consent of the moment by putting his hands on Chitose’s shoulders without warning him first, tugging him upright to adjust his pillows.

“Hey--I told you,” he protests, trying for a smile, knowing it’s weak. “Warn a guy first.”

“Sorry. Here, feel the dango? Hey, you’ve got something on--” He’s taken Chitose’s hand to move it to the plate, and Chitose nearly dies. Shame and lust and nervous amusement well up in him at once, and the tension is so stiff it crackles through them. Had Tachibana felt it? Had he noticed? He’d gone quiet, was that just because there was nothing else to say?

Make a joke out of it, he decides wildly, because his pulse is thundering, his mouth dry, and if he looks too guilty about it, Tachibana will know it was to do with _him_.

“Sorry,” he says, falsely cheerful and uncaring. “I was just using that hand to get off.”

“Aw--gross,” Tachibana says, and Chitose’s smile widens at the scorn. A thousand times better for Tachibana to be annoyed at the things he _does_ than at the thing he _is_.

He shrugs, and waves the offending hand in what he hopes is Tachibana’s general face area. “Couldn’t help myself. Woke up like--“

A box of tissues hits him in the chest. “Kippei, I think it’s a little late for just that...”

The weight leaves the bed. Tachibana is gone. Chitose exhales and sits back against the pillows, the smile fading from his face.

A moment later, Tachibana’s hand is back, and Chitose starts. “I said--“

The words die on his lips when Tachibana takes his hand, and wipes a damp cloth gently over his palm. Try as he might, Chitose can’t recall ever being touched exactly that gently by this man before, let alone after something so dirty, and his mouth opens and closes, failing in his search for something to say.

“You don’t have to try to be funny to make me...I mean,” Tachibana tries, interrupting himself, sounding annoyed, “you can just...tell me things. I’ll take care of it. I’m here to take care of you.”

Chitose clears his throat, glad Tachibana can’t see the sudden prickle in his eyes. “I, ah, I am funny,” he responds, going for lightness. “Shitenhouji teachers say so. Dark and surrealist humor, that’s why I pass even with my attendance.”

“You’re not dark and surrealist. You’re just gross,” Tachibana informs him, and Chitose can’t help but laugh, hearing an answering laugh dragged reluctantly from Tachibana.

There’s a short, comfortable silence, in which Chitose fumbles for a dumpling and stuffs it into his mouth, unable to stop himself from moaning a little when the yam and beans melt into each other on his tongue. As he finishes the first dumpling, Tachibana finally gathers his nerve, and asks the question he’s been avoiding for a day and a half.

“Why’d you do it?”

Chitose doesn’t bother to ask for clarification. Waste of time. He likes wasting time, but Tachibana hates it, and it would make a statement he’s not ready to make. He picks his sentence carefully, reaching for another dumpling. “They said they could fix my eye,” he says bluntly. “Why shouldn’t I have done it?”

“Because it’s an experimental procedure,” Tachibana responds immediately, stormclouds gathering in his voice. “The doctor told me they only gave you a thirty percent chance of it being successful.”

“Well, yeah,” Chitose admits. “But another fifty percent was not successful, but no worse off than I was.”

“And a twenty percent chance you could be really blind, forever.”

Chitose sighs. “It wouldn’t make that much of a difference.”

“What,” Tachibana asks, his voice suddenly low and tight, “the fuck does that mean?”

Oh, they’re going there. On the second day, they’re already going there. Five days left.

Slowly, wishing he could see Tachibana’s face--that’s nothing new, he’s been wishing that for years now, blindfold or no--Chitose levers himself into a better sitting position. He feels the yukata slide to the side as he shifts, but ignores it. “For me,” he says, in the kind of quiet, honest tone he likes to avoid whenever possible, “there’s no difference between being mostly blind in one eye, and being totally blind in both.”

He can feel it even now. The tension and excitement as Tachibana had prepared to show him his new move. The squeak of his shoes on the court. The worn grip tape in his hand. The Kumamoto breeze, full of salt spray and history.

The sharp, unexpected impact of the ball against his eye. Later, the baffled insistence that they had to be wrong, that it was going to heal because this _couldn’t happen_ , not to _him_.

Not to _them_.

“You wouldn’t be able to play anymore if you were blind.”

Chitose can hear the hope, as stupid as it sounds, in that voice. _Sorry, Kippei. I’m too tired to soften the blow today._ He knows what Tachibana wants to hear--that his eye doesn’t make that much of a difference. Tough luck. He’s the one pushing. “I already can’t play on the level I need to,” he says, voice quiet, but firm. “I...you get that I already gave up, right? On the dream?”

A big, warm hand grips his suddenly, and scolding Tachibana for touching without asking is the furthest thing from Chitose’s mind. “Don’t say that.”

“Not saying it doesn’t make it less true,” Chitose shoots back. “You had to cover for me how many times, in that last game?”

“And you beat me in the singles--“

“Because you _pitied_ me.” The words come out a sudden snarl, and Chitose fully expects Tachibana to snatch his hand back as if burned. Tachibana doesn’t. He grips even more tightly, as if he can squeeze away whatever Chitose is saying. “Because you stepped into my ball and got yourself injured. Our opponents aren’t going to refuse to hit to my blind spot--“

“I was trying to atone--“

“I know!” Chitose’s voice cracks, his other hand coming up to press against his forehead, as if he can physically shove the pain down to a manageable level. “I know. And it was...you didn’t have to, but it was...”

“You can say it. You can say it was necessary.”

“Kippei...”

“You can’t say anything about it worse than what I’ve said to myself.”

Tachibana’s fingers loosen, and Chitose grabs at them, covering them with his own, not letting him pull away. Not again. “I don’t...really have the right,” Tachibana says, with that oddly formal low voice he uses whenever something is really overwhelming but he’s determined not to let his emotions out. “But it wasn’t pity. I can’t have you thinking that.”

Chitose swallows hard, and for once, the pounding in his head is nowhere near as loud as the pounding in his heart. “Kippei...”

“How do I fix it?”

The words tear at him, all the more raw for their lateness. No, perhaps not late. Any earlier, and he wouldn’t have accepted them. Chitose inhales, his fingers still tight, although Tachibana doesn’t feel like he’s going to pull away. “That depends,” he finally says. “On what happens when the blindfold comes off.”

“...If...”

“If I’m blind, forget about me,” Chitose says bluntly, and tightens his hand even more when Tachibana tries to pull away, silences him when he tries to talk. “No. Shut up. I--shut the hell up and listen to me for once, _Captain_.”

He hears a muted click, that telltale little sign that means Tachibana has forced himself to shut his mouth without saying anything. There was a time he used to collect them, little unconscious things Tachibana did or said without realizing it, confident in the smug knowledge that no one else could know him the way Chitose did, because no one else had ever paid that sort of attention.

He takes a deep breath, and tries for the calm he’d felt a month ago, when they’d told him he was a good candidate for surgery, and he’d resigned himself to the whims of fate. It doesn’t really come, not all the way, but it’s close enough that he can fake it. “If my sight goes, you won’t see me again. I can’t pick up the pieces of this life left behind, Kippei. I built too much of what I am on our dream. So if it happens...I’ll remake myself, somehow. And you won’t owe that person anything. You won’t know that person.”

He swallows hard, aiming for a smile, unsure how it comes off. Tachibana’s hand is so warm between his own it feels like it might burn him. “And if I get my sight back--really back, if I can...” It doesn’t sound real, farther away now than it ever has been, as if looking at the dream too closely will shatter it. A quantum dream, that changes when it’s observed, forced to behave like a particle instead of a wave. “...If I can stand on the court again,” he continues, more quietly, “then I want to see you there.”

“Where?”

“On the tennis court.”

Tachibana’s hand curls on his, warm and calloused. “In the stands, cheering for you?” he asks. “Or...”

“It’s not like you to play coy with me, Kippei,” Chitose sighs, leaning his head back against the pillows. “I’m not such a nice guy I’d let you give up on me, just because you’ve got new people to care about, you know.”

“Say it.”

“You’re so demanding, I’m injured, you know!”

“Say it!”

Chitose exhales a hot, frustrated breath, feeling uncomfortably pinned down, like Tachibana is a light far too bright to allow any shadows to exist. In the face of that reckless honesty, he feels it dragged out of him, helplessly saying what he’d never planned to say again. “I want it all. I want everything you promised. I don’t care about everything that happened, I don’t care about whatever new dreams you made with anyone else, I want--“

“Yes.”

Tachibana squeezes his hands once more, then disentangles himself. Gravity shifts. Chitose is alone, in the dark, with his legs and his dreams exposed.

No hiding anymore.

**13**

Kippei is thirteen the first time a girl confesses to him. Why shouldn’t she? He’s the ace of their team, next year’s captain, the Golden Lion of Shishigaku. For some reason, he hides the letter, and the kiss she’d given him, from his best friend.

It’s exciting. It’s new. It makes him feel very grown-up, but even though he’s bursting to tell Senri all about it, about how a girl’s lips actually feel and how he could sort of feel her boobs pressed against his chest, about how she smelled like suntan lotion and tart cherry lip gloss, he doesn’t. It makes him hard thinking about it, late at night, and how easy it would have been to touch her chest, since it had been _right there_. In the darkness, he turns over on his bed and touches himself, pinning his cock between his hips and the mattress, his imagination running wild for about three seconds--he could touch her chest, Senri will be so jealous, he’d probably make that little smile, he’d probably pretend not to be upset but he _would_ be, Kippei is sure of that and doesn’t know why--before it’s over in a rush of heat and confusion, leaving him sticky and overwhelmed, alone in his bed.

He dates Shiori for two weeks, and she thinks it’s awfully exciting to keep it a secret between the two of them. She claims her parents would kill her, and he assures her that his are the same, even if they probably wouldn’t care even if they did notice. The farthest they get is his hand up her shirt after a particularly hard tennis practice--tennis always makes him horny, these days, which is embarrassing to hide from Senri and the guys on the team. Footsteps sound behind them, and she gasps, and he jumps away, and never catches sight of the shadow that vanishes around the corner.

Shiori thinks it’s funny. Kippei feels a sick pounding in his pulse.

He stops holding Shiori’s hand in secret. She pouts, but must not mind too much, because two days later, he catches her leaning up on tiptoes to make out with Senri behind the tennis shed, and Senri looks up to catch his eyes, a weird, lazy, calculating expression in them.

Kippei goes home and brings himself off in the shower, those eyes seared into his imagination. It was because Shori was there, he tells himself, and doesn’t believe it, and cries. It’s only for a minute, startled hot tears suddenly mixing with the hot water on his face, when he realizes that there is really something bone-deep wrong with him. Being a man means accepting the way things are. He isn’t ready to be a man yet.


	4. Friday | Eleven Years Old

**Friday**

The third day, Chitose’s headache is almost gone, as long as he doesn’t move too much, and Tachibana seems to be in ridiculously good spirits. He is, Chitose thinks merrily, a _terrible_ commentator, but seems determined to narrate McNally versus Mertens, as if Chitose can’t tell exactly what’s going on from the sound of the ball impacting clay.

“McNally’s hitting a lob, it’s gonna be--no, fuck! Ref! Augh! That was an ace for sure, what a bad call! All right, it’s change court, this is Mertens’ serve. He’s definitely going for that line drive, it--McNally hit it back, great slice, aw, _man!_ McNally’s gonna lose, this is so unfair, he’s usually in way better form. All right, it’s--fuck, that was _so cool_ , the way he dove for that one, I bet he’s bleeding somewhere--right, it’s McNally--this rally is wild, I wish you could see it--he’s making Mertens run for sure, you’re faster than him--“

Chitose listens to the rambling verbal assault on Mertens, who Tachibana apparently dislikes intensely, with humor. Tachibana sits on the edge of his bed, and pounds his thighs with his fists when he’s upset, tenses in excitement when there’s a long rally, and Chitose wants to put his hands all over Tachibana, tracing the contour of every powerful muscle with his fingertips.

The match is over far too soon, and Tachibana jumps up from the bed with a whoop, presumably to pound his fist into the air. That fierce, passionate shout makes Chitose stretch out luxuriously, smiling under the blindfold, feeling his freshly-washed hair against the towel behind his head to keep the pillow from being soaked.

Maybe being taken care of, being cooked for and carried to the shower, being told about tennis matches and having his hand squeezed in excitement, isn’t the worst thing in the world after all. At least it’s only for a week. It isn’t like he’s--

He shies away from the thought, and instead asks Tachibana, when he pauses for breath in insulting every one of Mertens’ relatives back to the Heian era, “Would you text my folks? Let them know the pain is better today, and tell them I ate a lot.”

“They know you’re eating a lot,” Tachibana assures him, and Chitose thinks he can hear a grin in that voice. “They know you’re with me.”

“Ehhhh, someone’s gotten _very_ secure about his cooking skills,” Chitose teases breezily. “Do your team all come over to eat your food every day?”

“Nope. They think it’s gross,” Tachibana says, with a bit of confusion in his voice. “I guess they haven’t had proper Kyushu nabe before.”

“Maybe don’t start with motsunabe,” Chitose advises. “That’s a little high-level for Tokyo boys. Start with ramen or something.”

“But they can get that anywhere, that’s not special.”

“It’s always special when Kippei cooks for me.”

Tachibana’s hand comes down on his hair, mussing it like they’re twelve again. Chitose has given up on telling Tachibana to alert him before he touches. He just forgets, then feels bad, and it makes Chitose feel like he’s too jumpy to be allowed to be around humans.

Also, telling Tachibana about the dream, not yet dead, had had a cleansing effect. Sort of like seawater in a raw wound, yes, but cleansing all the same.

“What do you want tonight?” Tachibana asks, and maybe they are twelve again, lying on the hill behind the tennis court, staring up at the sky together, chests heaving with exertion after a hard practice. That was when he’d started calling Tachibana _Captain_ , a little shyly, and Tachibana had always answered with _Vice-Captain_ , with that irrepressible grin.

They’d never been Captain and Vice-Captain, though. After the accident, they’d both left the school. Tachibana had gone on to Captain a different team, and Chitose had called another guy with bleached-blond hair _Captain_ , though two more different men he can’t imagine. Shiraishi’s nervous, deliberate delicacy, strange confidence at the weirdest times, and intense precision are nothing like Tachibana’s wild style, somewhere between a ferocious lion and a proud mother bear.

“What?” he asks, when Tachibana pokes him in the knee.

“Dinner. What do you want tonight?”

“Oh, right. Mm, make me sukiyaki.”

“Yeah, all right. What were you thinking about?” Tachibana’s hand stays on his knee, and Chitose is so, so jealous that Tachibana doesn’t get the same prickles of goosebumps and longing that he does, every time. “Where did you go, right then?”

“I was thinking about Shiraishi,” Chitose answers honestly, and the hand withdraws. Ah. Wrong answer, then. So he amends, “And how glad I am that it’s you taking care of me, not him. He only knows how to make noodles. They’re good noodles, though.”

“Was he your backup?” Tachibana asks. It’s easy to imagine, if he tries, and he _does_ , that Tachibana is jealous. Mm, no, actually, he probably _is_ jealous, which is delicious. Captain envy. Chitose wonders vaguely why he hasn’t tormented him mercilessly about that before, and resolves to do so now.

“My backup?” he asks innocently. “Well, setting aside the fact that I didn’t actually text you, Kippei. My sister did, remember?”

“But if you’d known. If you’d known you needed someone to come stay with you for a week.”

Tachibana is a gift, honestly. He’s making it so easy. Chitose stretches languidly, reaching his hands up over his head, wiggling his toes. “No, he wouldn’t be my backup. He’d be my first choice.”

The strangled huff that comes from Tachibana’s throat is worth the indignity of being bathed a hundred times over. “Even if he can only make noodles? And noodles are _easy_ , An could make noodles when she was five.”

“Well. He _is_ my Captain.”

“Was. He _was_ your Captain. That was middle school.”

Oh, this is working deliciously. Chitose can’t deny that having Tachibana fired up to essentially pull Shiarishi off of him (a world where that would happen, how does he order one?) is the most exciting thing he’s encountered recently. He affects innocence, and shrugs. “I guess he’s just such a caretaker type. The kind that makes you fine with letting your guard down.”

“And I’m not?”

So affronted, so prickly. So stupid. Chitose could swoon. “Mm, no. You’re a different kind.”

“What the hell kind is that?”

“The kind that makes me want to be better, you idiot,” Chitose says with a sigh, dropping the act and swatting at where he’s pretty sure Tachibana is. He smacks cotton-covered muscle, so he can’t be too far off. “The kind that makes me want to show you all my best parts, not the worst ones.”

There’s a pause, and then Tachibana lets out a low, warning chuckle that makes Chitose’s hair stand up on the back of his neck. Hell, his cock stands up, too, but at least he’s got a blanket over that. “You think you show me your good side?”

Chitose considers that, head tilting to the side, then grins. “I said I _want_ to show you my good side. But I’m a contrary sort of person, don’t you think? I don’t usually do what I want to do. Kippei, don’t tease me, make me sukiyaki and I’ll try to forget you don’t have bandages on your hand.”

Has Tachibana’s hair grown more? Chitose hopes so. He misses the way Tachibana would shake it out, ruffling it up like a lion’s mane, knowing full well what all the girls called him and playing to it.

“You’re such a dick,” Tachibana says with a sigh, and ruffles his hair again before standing. “A demanding one. Fine, I’ll make you sukiyaki. You want me to change the channel?”

“Just turn it off.”

“You want to sit in silence?”

Chitose almost points out that it’s not really silent. There’s the faraway sound of waves against the beach, and the wind rustling through leaves on the trees, and the sounds of kids chasing each other down the street, and two Ryukyu minivets chirping in their nest up in the rafters of the house next door. He almost asks if Tachibana ever has the overwhelming feeling in Tokyo that each one of the millions of people he passes on the streets, in the trains, has their own life, that each of them has some thing or person that is the center of their very own calculations, that every one of those millions of people has one thing for which they’d die. He almost asks what Tachibana hears in the silence, or if he never sits that way because he’s afraid to hear the sounds his own mind is making.

But Tachibana has never listened to the silence with him. Tachibana probably hasn’t had his brain scanned at local universities a dozen times for fun. Tachibana thinks of things in concrete terms, as if solid state matter is unchangeable and constant. Chitose has no idea what it must be like to think that way, and still believe that one can surpass his own limits.

At some point in his rumination, he supposes Tachibana took his own silence for agreement, and left. He listens to the sound of the waves, and the sound of Tachibana’s knife meeting the bamboo cutting board, and tries to hear the inaudible.

He breathes, and imagines that this is it. It’s possible, he knows. He might be like this forever, trapped in a sightless world without escape. He breathes, and puts himself there, as he has before, but without the rather effective prop of the blindfold.

What would it be like?

There would be no tennis, of course. That’s the biggest thing. How to reshape himself around a dream that doesn’t exist? Math professor, maybe, he decides. Or traveling bum. One of the two would suit him quite well. Yes, he could picture himself in college, and teaching, with cane in hand and a pair of dark glasses so his odd fuzzy eyes don’t bother the people around him. Maybe he’ll do that. Koharu’s father would get him an interview at Kandai, put in a good word. He’ll need it, with his attendance record. Or he could come back down here, and go to Kyudai, but if he’s going to be a new man, he might as well do it in Osaka. He could tease his TAs and get an apartment near the school. He could pack a bento every day, and only go wandering in the summer and during spring break. Maybe he could get in trouble for having an affair with another professor, or go on sabbatical after a few years and write a book.

It doesn’t sound like a bad life. Being blind isn’t frightening. He’s not afraid to cross the street or lose the ability to read, there’s apps and canes and textured sidewalks and voice-to-text and braille and optical readers. He’s always had a good sense of the world around him, and his hearing is already overly-sensitive. There’s nothing about the life of a math professor that scares him.

Perhaps he could go into the professional shogi circuit, instead. Shogi is a lot like tennis, in the end. As long as someone tells him which pieces are where, he shouldn’t have much issue. He’d probably get a cool nickname, like The Blind Genius or something.

Losing his sight is only terrifying, it turns out, because it means The Dream is dead.

That had been a lot easier to deal with before Tachibana had gripped his hands and said _yes_.

**11**

The first time Kippei mentions The Dream out loud, they’re eleven. It doesn’t start out as a big deal. Senri is next to him, the two of them opting to walk back from the tournament instead of riding the bus with the others, since both of them have houses on the North end of the city anyway. “Did you see Awakuji’s face?” Kippei asks, grinning as he aims his foot at a rock, expertly kicking it in front of him as they walk, both of them tired from the day’s exertions but brimming with delight. “When you took his service game with that last ace, _pow_. I thought he was going to cry!”

“I saw Fukuo’s face,” Senri says, beaming back. “When you hit that ball right into his stomach. I thought he was going to puke.”

“He should be faster.” No one minds too much if he’s too rough on the courts. If it were bad, there would be a rule against it, wouldn’t there? An cries sometimes when he makes someone bleed, but she’s just a girl, and she’s just nine, so she couldn’t understand how it feels to be a man. “I bet he’ll learn to be faster now.”

The trophy is heavy, but Kippei had insisted on carrying it the whole way home, unwilling to even let the other boys take a turn bearing its weight. It’s his, anyway, his and Senri’s. “Did you hear what they called us?”

“The Two Wings of Kyushu.” Senri’s voice is dreamy. He sometimes gets a faraway look, like his mind has gone somewhere that only he can see, even while Kippei is standing right next to him. “It’s got a nice sound, don’t you think?”

“Yeah.” Kippei hoists the trophy up higher, feeling a swell of pride when he sees their names, engraved next to each other. It feels right. “We should teach it to everyone who gets in our way.”

Senri’s eyes twinkle at him, and his foot fumbles with the rock, ankle starting to turn before he hops away. “Teach who?”

“Whoever tries to stop us.”

Everyone who’d tried to teach him anger management had missed the point. He doesn’t need managing, he’s decided. He needs directing. He needs goals, something to work towards, and above all else, someone to protect. If he’s doing it for _someone else_ , for a _reason_ , no one seems to think it’s a problem, and neither does he.

“Kippei,” Senri laughs. “What do you mean?”

“Well, on the court.” That isn’t exactly what he’d meant, but nothing else feels right on his tongue. “Whenever anyone tries to get in our way. We’ll fly above them.”

“...The thing about wings, though. Aren’t both of them usually on the same creature?”

Kippei’s smile is fierce, and he shoulders the trophy with one hand, grabbing Senri’s hand with the other, squeezing tight. “If we don’t let go, it’s fine.”

He wishes he had a camera. He has a polaroid of the two of them from earlier, hoisting the trophy into the air, but _this_ is the look on Senri’s face that he wants to remember. Senri looks young, confused, overjoyed, startled, nervous, and hungry all at the same time, though maybe Kippei can only see those things because they know each other so well.

Then Senri squeezes his hand back, and Kippei decides he doesn’t need a camera. He just has to keep making Senri make that expression all the time, and that’s just as good. “We should do this forever,” he blurts. “Like you always say.”

Senri’s head tilts to the side. “Eh? I know, that’s why I always say it.”

“No, I mean...like a plan.” The more he says, the more Kippei likes the idea, likes the words. “We’ll be on the team together in the spring. And the next year, I’ll be Captain of Shishigaku, and you’ll be my Vice-Captain, and we’ll win Nationals. Then, after that--let’s go pro as a doubles pair. We can play singles, too, duh, but...we could do it. And the Olympics, too! And--“

He expects Senri to cut him off, to tell him he sounds stupid like his parents would, to tell him that tennis is a fun hobby but he should focus on his English or his drafting because architecture is a career you don’t age out of, but Senri doesn’t. He’s standing stock still, hand tight on Kippei’s, his eyes sparkling as if Kippei’s saying something wonderful. “And?” he breathes, and the dream springs back full force, as if it’s never threatened to pop like a soap bubble.

He continues, invigorated. “And we’ll live in Australia,” he decides. “It’s not that far away, but the tennis is way better, and it’s a _huge_ country, so I can practice my English and you can wander around way more than you can on this little island. And when we’re really famous and rich, I’ll design us a big house and Miyuki and An can live in it. On, like, the other side of the house, though,” he adds thoughtfully, as if An is already too close into his space.

“Kippei,” Senri says softly, and Kippei has never liked his own name more. “Ah, thanks. I’m taking it.”

Kippei blinks. “What?”

“Your dream. Thanks for the meal. It’s mine, now. I’ve taken it. Ahh, I can’t wait to move to Australia!”

“With me!” Kippei insists, face reddening. “You’re moving to Australia with me!”

“Kippei, you’re so passionate about Australia! Yay, Australia banzai!”

“I don’t care about Australia, I want to live with you and play tennis with you forever!”

Senri plucks the trophy out of his arms--he’s strong for his age, but Senri is strong too, and tall, and Kippei doesn’t resist--and clasps Kippei’s hand even more tightly, leaning in as if a single wing has attached to his back. It’s only unbalanced if there’s no one to hold him up. Kippei takes the hint, and leans his shoulder against Senri’s, nudging him back on track the whole way home. “Be careful,” Senri warns him, and Kippei feels a qualm, knows he isn’t a careful person. “Now that you’ve told me the dream, I won’t settle for anything less.”


	5. Saturday | Fourteen Years Old

**Saturday**

“It’s Schroedinger’s Dream,” Chitose mutters, picking moodily at the gyuudon with his fingers. He’d learned early that chopsticks are stupidly messy when he can’t see where the other end of the sticks are, and had dripped sauce all over himself before simply giving up and eating with his hands like a toddler. It’s better than having Tachibana keep feeding him, that’s for sure.

“What’s that, Chitose?”

Chitose shakes his head to clear it, and says a bit louder, “Nothing, Kura. Just something that’s alive and dead at the same time. How’s the training camp going?”

“Really good!” comes Shiraishi’s voice over the phone, suddenly enthusiastic, taking him at his word that it’s nothing. “Our seniors are really dedicated, it makes me want to push my Bible Tennis even further. I really think I’m going to enjoy not being Captain this year. Ikuhara-buchou knows what he’s doing, and he’s very disciplined and punctual!”

“That sounds awful,” Chitose says sweetly, and shoves a bit of shaved beef into his mouth. “I’d probably be kicked off the team in a week.”

“You’re _sure_ you won’t reconsider?” Shiraishi’s voice is so hopeful, despite repeated rejections. What a prince he is. Chitose would cheerfully poison anyone who hurt him. No, not poison, that might reflect badly on Shiraishi, what with those Aconitum and Dieffenbachia he’s always growing in his dorm room. “We could really use you on the team next year for sure, but I’d love to have you for moral support this year.”

“Even if you’re just picking up balls? You need to be morally supported for that?” Chitose teases.

Shiraishi sounds baffled. “Of course. I always need to be morally supported!”

God. He does, doesn’t he? “How’s the new coach?” Chitose asks instead, because that’s easier than somehow hauling Shiraishi through the phone to suffocate him in a hug that lasts way too long and gets very weird.

Shiraishi makes a disgruntled little noise, then quickly follows it up with, “Just because he isn’t Osamu doesn’t mean he isn’t fine!” in an obvious, wistful lie.

“I get it, Kura. Nothing’s the same as it was, is it?”

“We’re going to have a great year.” Chitose can hear the stubbornness in Shiraishi’s voice, and has to concede that if he has anything to do with it, they will absolutely have a great year. “We’re definitely going to laugh the most and have the most fun of any team!”

“I can taste the trophy already,” Chitose assures him.

“Haha! Wait, was that a joke?”

“I gotta go, Kura. My family needs me to help with dinner.” A lie, obviously, like everything else he’s told Shiraishi in the last few months. And then, because he can hear Tachibana’s footsteps pause in the hallway, he adds, “I’m sending you a kiss, though.”

“Through the phone?”

“Mm, maybe through the mail. That seems more romantic, right? Letters sealed with a kiss?”

“I think glue would probably work better,” Shiraishi says thoughtfully. “But I’ll watch the letterbox. If it goes into the wrong hands, would that be assault?”

Chitose hears Shiraishi straining for the joke he obviously thinks he’s supposed to make, and takes pity, giving him a laugh. It really is funny, though not because of Shiraishi’s skill at comedy. “Very good, Kura.”

He can almost see Shiraishi’s face glowing with pleasure and pride. Why can’t he see Tachibana’s face, when the man is right here, and should be so much easier to read? “Thank you, Chitose! Send my affection and thanks to your family, and I hope your grandfather gets well soon!”

“Hear that, Papa?” Chitose calls sweetly into the hallway, fumbling to end the phone call with the side buttons. “Shiraishi sends his affection and thanks!”

“Who’s Papa?” Tachibana asks crossly, footsteps coming closer. “You’re in a mood, I can tell.”

“Bored,” Chitose declares, and flops back against the bed. His head doesn’t hurt so much today, and it’s made him less sleepy, which unfortunately just makes him itch under the skin. “I want to leave the house.”

“If I have to explain what bed rest means to you one more time--“

“Kippei, _please_ ,” Chitose whines, feeling his muscles oddly empty, devoid of any exercise or power in their sadly atrophied state (that’s definitely how it works after three days of no exercise). “If I’m going to be blind forever, I at least have to learn how to walk!”

“There’s years for you to learn stuff like that,” Tachibana growls. “And you don’t know yet.”

Chitose is pretty sure he knows. It had come to him that last night, waking from a dream to a reality just as terrifying. This _is_ it, he thinks, and feels strangely numb about it. “You can even carry me,” he wheedles. “Just down to the beach.”

“Carry you to the beach? How strong do you think I am? You weigh more than I do!”

“Only...what, fifteen kilos?”

“Osaka really is a food city, huh?”

“...Now you’re calling me fat, you _have_ to take me to the beach. Just think! I won’t run into anything, because there’s nothing but sand, and if I fall down, it’s just sand!”

He wishes he could see Tachibana’s expression. It’s nowhere near as fun to get a rise out of him if he doesn’t get to see that first hot flush up the back of Tachibana’s neck before it spreads to his ears. When it gets to his face, that’s when he knows it’s time to start running, which, fortunately, he’s always been better at than Tachibana has.

He hears Tachibana sigh, then offer, “I don’t think I can carry you there and back, but the hospital sent down a wheelchair, if you really want to go. I can carry you once we get to the sand.”

Chitose feels all the joy of needling Tachibana melt away. Suddenly, he’s tired, and flops back onto the bed. “Eh...nah.”

“Moody,” Tachibana mutters again. “You always get weird after you talk to him.”

“Always? Ehh, this is only the second time I’ve talked to him this week.” Both after their conversation about Shiraishi, both when Tachibana could hear, because suddenly the idea that he could make Tachibana jealous is once again the funniest, sickest thing he’s thought of.

He’d done it before, deliberately finding out who Tachibana was dating when he’d thought he’d hidden it so well, taking those girls aside and flirting sweetly, making sure they opened to him like a flower to the moon’s false light, a pale reflection of the life-giving sun that is Tachibana. And if he’d made _sure_ Tachibana knew, well, is that really any worse than Tachibana keeping it from him? Probably, he admits, because Tachibana wasn’t just touching and kissing them to see if he could feel the ghost of his best friend’s touch imprinted on their skin.

 _Be jealous_ , he urges, though the smile stays plastered on his face. _Be angry. Tell me to only be yours, tell me no one can be my Captain like you, tell me you’d want me if I had no eyes or five eyes or was a math professor. Make a move!_

Chitose knows he could make a move, too. Of course. But not when he _needs_ something from Tachibana. Not when he’s dependent on him. If Tachibana says yes, Chitose will always wonder if it’s because he feels sorry for the best friend he crippled, whose dream he stole. If Tachibana says no, he’s too honorable a bastard not to insist on taking care of him anyway, for what would be a decidedly awkward few days.

And last year, he couldn’t, because there was still the unsettled tension between them after the accident, and adding another storm of emotions to the riot wouldn’t have been helpful.

And before that, it might have interfered with The Dream, and Chitose had decided one day in Kumamoto, holding Tachibana’s hand with one hand and the W60 Youth Tournament Doubles trophy with the other, that nothing was allowed to interfere with The Dream.

In chess, if fifty moves pass without a capture, the game is forfeit, and both players walk away disappointed. Chitose thinks about that a lot. Idly, he casts himself as the Black King, though in doubles, he’d always thought of himself as Tachibana’s Queen, moving faster and farther and in unpredictable directions. That is the advantage of chess over shogi, the Queen piece, that most powerful ally, protector, assassin.

For the sake of being the Queen, for having that power at his disposal, he’d committed them to a game with a time limit. There is no fifty-move rule in shogi. They could keep going forever, back and forth, back and forth. Not resting, just keeping in stalemate.

“You really are off in space, huh?” Tachibana’s voice isn’t angry now, just sort of resigned. “Chitose, I’ve said your name three times.”

“Huh?” With an effort, Chitose snaps out of a chess-induced state, feeling as if he’s late for school.

“I said, I’m gonna tie a string to your bed and run it down the hall into the bathroom,” Tachibana says. “So you can go by yourself, if you’re feeling well enough to walk.”

A wave of relief rushes over Chitose, and he nods firmly. “Yeah. I feel way better today. Hey, Kippei. What would you study, if you went to college?”

There’s a short pause, then a gruff, “You already know, right? It hasn’t been that long.”

He does know, of course. But he’s starting to settle into the idea of being a professor, focusing on multivariate differentiation and directional derivatives, speaking to people who actually give a shit about gradient vectors and hyperboloids.

People besides Koharu, at least.

“Do architects have to take math?” he wonders out loud. “They certainly should. I’ll teach you. I’ve decided to become a math professor.”

“Uh huh. Yeah, architects have to take a lot of math. Calc and trig at least, according to my advisor.”

“Perfect. I’ll teach you.”

“We’re the same age.”

Chitose pouts a bit at that. “Well, I figure you’re going to go pro for a few years. Then when you blow your knee out--“

“I’m not going to blow my knee out!”

“--you can come take classes at Kandai--“

“I’d go to Todai!”

“--and I’ll teach you.” Chitose beams. “Doesn’t that sound nice?”

“Having you assign me calculus homework does not sound nice,” Tachibana growls, and Chitose laughs.

“It sounds fun to me. You’d have to call me Sensei.” That’s a funny little daydream, and he sits in it until gravity changes again, Tachibana getting off the bed. It’s hard not to reach out, to call out, and his head turns to follow the motion even if he can’t see anything no matter where he’s facing. “Kippei?”

“I’m getting the string. Don’t you want to be able to piss without my help?”

“You’re just getting tired of lifting me,” Chitose accuses. “The more heavy things you lift, the better. That’s why my legs are stronger than yours.”

Tachibana snorts. “They won’t be for long, if you don’t try walking.”

“Who’s the one demanding I’m on bedrest?” Chitose demands, but then he hears Tachibana laugh, and knows he’s been teased right back. Frankly, he _does_ deserve it, even if Tachibana is still too clueless to figure out why Chitose is determined to make him jealous.

The string _is_ a good idea, he has to admit, when he can get out of bed (still makes his head pound, but he can live with that) and drag himself to the bathroom without having to call for Tachibana to come help him every time, secure in the knowledge that he won’t walk into anything or get lost. For the first time in three days, he drinks as much water as he pleases with dinner, only to realize on his third trip to the bathroom that he’s not nearly as recovered as he wants to be, and winds up calling Tachibana for help back to his room anyway.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he insists.

“Look at you like what? You can’t even see me. You don’t know how I look.”

“Like...” Chitose fumbles for words, tucked against Tachibana’s chest, his head feeling as if it’s about to explode. “Like I’m cosplaying Rikkai’s Yukimura.” Which wouldn’t be fair, anyway, because what Yukimura had was curable.

“You’ve been hanging out with those cosplayers on your team too much. You think you know what I look like, huh?”

“I think I know what you look like, yeah.”

“Fine. How long is my hair?”

Chitose’s hand reaches up, just as Tachibana bends to deposit him on the bed, pulling away before he can make contact with his head. “No fair,” he complains. “Gimme.”

“No. Guess.”

“I’d just be projecting what I want.”

“Good. At least I’d know what you want for once.”

How the fuck the clueless bastard manages to throw him off his game _constantly_ is a mystery for the ages. Or at least for some form of calculus beyond what Chitose is pretty sure he could teach. “Long,” he says, almost defiantly, because it _is_ what he wants. “You grew it out and you don’t look like a yellow cue-ball anymore.”

“How much do you think hair grows in a year? Hmph. You’ll have to wait until Tuesday to find out.”

If he’d had the use of his eyes, Chitose would have rolled them, insisted that he won’t be able to see anything on Tuesday so there’s no use waiting for that. Maybe in a decade, when he’s wearing tweed jackets with leather elbow patches and probably getting in trouble for sleeping around the faculty, Tachibana will finally believe that the injury he’d done that day really had been permanent.

“Then on Tuesday, you have to let me touch your head.”

“Fine.”

 _And every other day, you should let me touch you wherever the hell I feel like_ , Chitose almost says, because he’s getting tired, and his head is hurting, and self-control feels like something he’d left in the bathroom. He sighs, and turns over to face the wall. “I’m gonna sleep. Night, Kippei.”

“Night, Chitose.”

Chitose falls asleep before he hears footsteps leave, and in his sleepy state, can’t tell if that’s because he falls asleep quickly, or because Tachibana stays next to him for longer than he’d thought.

**15**

Kippei is fifteen the first time he fools around with another guy. It takes him years to build up the courage, afraid it’s going to be a huge, terrifying, _very different_ thing from sticking his hand up a girl’s shirt, but unable to deny that he wants to, badly. And sticking his hand up a girl’s shirt hadn’t done too much for him, and from what he can tell, hadn’t done too much for the girls, either.

He does look at men. He looks, noticing their muscles and their long necks and their Adam’s apples and their graceful fingers, notices the texture of their hair and the way they smell, in a way that he doesn’t notice girls unless he makes an effort. He can, though. He can decide to notice girls. When he makes an effort, he can see the sweet curve of their torsos and the flutter of their lashes and the muscles of their thighs and the way their lips part in surprise. He can kiss them, and it feels nice, and he can get hard from the contact, and even if that’s just because he’s fifteen, it makes him feel a little less broken inside.

Armed with the knowledge that he _can_ like girls, he lets himself look a little more at guys. Not at his team; they’re the closest thing to sacred he has, his precious little brothers. It isn’t even difficult to avoid looking at them--his eyes don’t want to go there.

Guys on other teams, though...his eyes want to go there, sometimes. They dip down, then up again, and just once, his eyes slide up from someone’s Prince Triple Threat RIP, and he catches the other boy’s eyes looking at him the same way, with burning intensity.

He’d thought it would be terrifying, would make him different in some way. In reality, it’s less awkward than messing around with a girl ever has been. They make their way to the shed in back of his house after a practice game, cluttered with garden tools and boxed up papers and broken things that have never found a home, but used to be too valuable to throw away.

He sticks his hand up Fuji’s shirt, Fuji slips his hand into Kippei’s shorts, and their mouths meet in a hot, tangled kiss that reminds him of dangerous plants and fresh apples. It feels a lot like messing around with girls, except that instead of committing himself to find it arousing, he’s nearly overwhelmed by the force of it crashing down around him.

“You’re so intense,” Fuji murmurs, breath hitching a little as he does, and Kippei knows without asking that this isn’t Fuji’s first time with another guy. If it is, he’s terrifying, with the level of ease and familiarity he shows palming Kippei’s cock in a way that makes his brain stutter and die. “Passionate. It’s good, Tachibana-san.”

Kippei is pretty sure he has one hand gripping Fuji’s hip, the other clutching at his shirt, and he tries to remember that it’s not that sexy to just grab and gasp and let Fuji take care of him. He does his best--he thinks it’s his best--to grab at Fuji in turn, shoving his hand under the elastic waistband for his first touch of another man’s cock. His face flames with hunger when he does touch it, feeling the hard length against his hand, both of them pressed close together in the garden shed.

He hadn’t planned this. He isn’t entirely sure if he’s ready for it, either, but the last thing in the world he wants is to stop. One of Fuji’s fingernails scrapes over the underside of his cock, and he lets out a short, muffled cry into Fuji’s shoulder, coming in hot pulses over Fuij’s hand.

“Easy, easy, isn’t that nice? There you go,” Fuji murmurs, as Kippei feels himself shudder and twitch in a way he never does when he brings himself off in the shower.

He likes to think he isn’t useless, and he _does_ manage to get Fuji off, even if Fuji is breathing some kind of strange things into his ear, and his eyes keep straying to land on Fuji’s racquet.

When he’s cleaning off his hand, wiping it on his face towel with a mental note to wash it later, he asks, almost shyly, “You don’t really want me to do all that stuff, right?”

“What stuff?” Fuji asks sweetly, as if he weren’t standing with his shorts around his ankles in an acquaintance’s garden shed, as if he hadn’t just been whispering, _‘hurt me, break me, make me cry, make me bleed.’_

“Um...” Kippei fumbles for words, and settles on the fairly lame, “Good luck at Nationals, Fuji.”

“You too, Tachibana!”


	6. Chapter 6

**Sunday**

Three more days.

Chitose is sure he can’t handle it. Surely it wouldn’t hurt if he just took a tiny peek. What difference is one or two days more in the grand scheme of things, really? At least if he tries, he’ll _know_ , one way or another.

So when Tachibana tells him he has to go into town to pick up some groceries, and Chitose hears the bicycle pull out of the driveway, he reaches up and unties the blindfold. It falls to his lap, and he takes a deep breath, setting his resolve.

He opens his eyes.

There’s a sharp spike of pain, and a flash of red, blooming against his eyes in the darkness. He gasps, feeling his eyes water with the pain, and raises a hand in front of his face, waving it.

Nothing.

Darkness.

Darkness, colored red with pain.

A weary, terrible, buzzing feeling settles over him, then. He turns onto his side, feeling his pulse beat dully in his eyeballs, and tells himself that he likes math, and it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to disappear. Maybe he could leave now, while Tachibana is getting the groceries. Before he’s really sure what he’s doing, he fumbles for his phone, holding the button that brings up voice-to-text, and says clearly, “Call Nana.”

“...Senri-chan?” comes the voice after a few rings, and Chitose tries not to cry. “Are you doing all right?”

“I’m--“ He chokes on the words, but she’s the one person he’s never had to put on a false smile for in his life, and can see through them all anyway. “I’m--I’m blind, Nana.”

Saying the words is like the bursting of a damn, and he curls in on himself, letting himself sob for the first time in years. She doesn’t hush him, just lets him cry, sobbing out his anger at the universe, his pleading for it to be unmade, his grief at losing the dream, his awful dislocation at not knowing where to go now, what to do, who to be.

He isn’t sure how long he cries. Eventually, when his pillow is wet and his eyes burn harder than ever, when it feels as if his stomach hurts from the sobbing and his hands ache from being balled into fists, he comes to a stop, chest finally sinking into an easy rhythm.

“That’s better,” his grandmother says gently over the phone. “Mm, I wish I could spirit you away right now.”

“It’s fine, Nana,” he says softly, his voice hoarse. “I’m being taken care of. Promise.”

“Still, I wish.” She hesitates, then says, “Don’t forget, Senri-chan. There isn’t anything about you so awful that someone can’t love you. You’ve got that brain that works too fast sometimes, gets ahead of you. Convinces you of things that haven’t happened yet.”

“How is that different from seeing the future, like you do?” he asks raggedly.

“I’m just parting the curtain for a peek. You’re always trying to understand every little secret. The world is big and full of mysteries, dear one. You don’t have to know everything already.”

Somehow, his grandmother always manages to give advice on what he needs to hear, rather than the questions he’s actually asked. He sniffles, wipes his face on his pillow, and nods as if she can see him. “All right. I’ll try to remember how little I know.”

“Good child. See, this is why you shouldn’t always have skipped music class. Plenty of famous blind musicians.”

“I don’t like music, Nana. Besides, I think I’m a bit more Tiresias than Stevie Wonder.” Maybe that’s a good career for him, he thinks blearily. Vague, disconcerting prophecies, and occasionally turning into a woman.

“You’re Miyuki’s big brother, is who you are,” she says tartly. “So don’t play the sadness game too long. This universe is still expecting a lot from you, from all the brains she saw fit to give. She told me so.”

Chitose would love to be as certain about any single thing in the world as his grandmother is about everything. “Yes, Nana. I’ll try.”

A shrieking noise comes from the phone, and his grandmother sighs. “I got the kettle on,” she says by way of farewell, and hangs up.

At some point, he passes out, overwhelmed by the act of being alive when everything is so awful. He wakes when Tachibana opens the door to his room, but doesn’t raise his head.

“You can tell me you love me now, I got you basashi,” Tachibana says cheerfully, then pauses, taking in the scene in front of him. “Chitose?”

Chitose sucks in a weary breath, and manages to twitch one corner of his mouth. “Yo.”

“The hell are you doing?” Tachibana demands, sounding worried more than angry. Chitose hears the footsteps right before the bed dips, and warm hands are suddenly on his face, brushing over his cheeks and eyelids. “Why’d you take it off?”

“I had to know,” Chitose whispers. “I had to.”

“But you _can’t_ know yet. The doctors said they’d induced blindness, I told you that. What the fuck are you supposed to be knowing?”

“If...” That sinks in slowly, and Chitose frowns. Maybe he can blame the way Tachibana’s touching him so gently, with hands that he’s been mildly obsessed with for ten years, for the way his brain isn’t quite working. “I thought...the blindfold was to keep me from getting hurt by using them before they’re ready.”

“The blindfold,” Tachibana says, with more patience than Chitose really thinks he deserves right now, “is to keep you from opening them. Because when they induce blindness like this, the...fuck, I don’t really understand it, something about how much light gets let into your pupils and how the eye stops seeing things when it’s forced to be still. The point is, you can hurt them by opening them and looking at the light, even if you can’t see it yet.”

“...Yet.”

“ _Yet_.” Tachibana lets go of him, and Chitose makes a move, a sudden, abortive jerk towards him that has Tachibana patting his leg, sitting on the bed to make gravity dip around him again. A moment later, the hands are back, winding the cloth around his head again. “When you go back in on Tuesday, they’re going to do the medical shock pulses in reverse or whatever to un-paralyze the nerves, or something. I didn’t really pay that much attention, I was focused on you.”

Chitose is pretty sure Tachibana isn’t lying. Slowly, his head tips forward, forehead bumping against Tachibana’s shoulder, and coming to rest there. “I’m such an idiot.”

“That’s my line. I thought I told you. I swear I did. Maybe it was before you woke up all the way. Sorry, Chitose.”

Chitose opens his mouth, hears something, and closes it. If he points out that Tachibana is talking in Kyushu-ben again, would he be self-conscious? Would he stop? Better not to mention it, and keep hearing the lilt of _yokka_ and _batten, tai_ and _bai_ , reminding him that he’s part of a shared history that the uncertain future isn’t allowed to touch.

He leans forward, all the strength gone from his body, just sagging against the warm power of Tachibana’s muscular chest. He’s really not that large, Chitose thinks, not for the first time. The force of his personality is the huge thing about him, making him stand out in any crowd. In any photograph of their old team, Chitose’s eyes had always gone to Tachibana first, that aura emanating from him obvious even in a still image.

Then again, that might be partially because he’s been in love with Tachibana since he could write his name.

That thought hits him like a wave crashing against the beach. He doesn’t usually think in those terms. He actively _avoids_ thinking in terms of big, immovable, permanent things whenever he can, preferring to stay light, changeable, capricious, adaptable. It’s fine to think of the things he wants to do. He wants to touch Tachibana, wants to draw him into a kiss that lasts hours, wants to feel Tachibana’s fingers threading through his hair, wants to straddle him and feel Tachibana’s cock open him up, wants to coax Tachibana into spreading his own legs, wants to lick and suck and kiss and kiss and kiss and hold Tachibana’s hand without talking about tennis or being partners. He wants to come home every day and hear Tachibana humming to himself as he cooks, wants to rub Tachibana’s shoulders when he gets too tense after work, wants to fight over the covers and tease Tachibana for his cargo pants and the TV he picks and sit with their legs casually entwined. He wants to teach Tachibana the sound of the wind through leaves, teach him to see the future through angles and waves, and feel Tachibana’s teeth graze his ear, and hold his hand in front of a screaming crowd at Wimbledon, and hear Tachibana get them a table at a restaurant by saying, _he’s with me, we’re together_ , and not care what anyone thinks.

It’s fine, too, to acknowledge that every daydream and every wet dream he’s ever had have been about Tachibana, that he doesn’t know how he’d ever get off if he didn’t have the memory of Tachibana’s shoulder pressed against his, Tachibana’s hair hitting him in the face (always, it was always everywhere, always in the way).

But he doesn’t think about being in _love_.

Maybe today is just the day for awful, uncomfortable truths. Chitose can hear Tachibana’s heart beating through his chest, and at some point, Tachibana’s arms have come up around him, stroking gently down his back.

Chitose can’t remember the last time someone held him.

A fear seizes him when Tachibana shifts, and he grabs Tachibana’s arm, clinging to it. “Don’t--“

“I’m not letting go. Just readjusting.”

God. Of all the times for the big idiot to get it right. Chitose knows he’s trembling, but when Tachibana rearranges himself, sitting securely and tugging Chitose to lay against his chest, the shivers stop. The heat of him, that’s probably why, Chitose thinks, half-delirious. Tachibana has always been warm under the skin, though he’d never let Chitose snuggle close like this in the winter before. Of course he’s letting him now that it’s August and sticky-hot.

“When’s the last time someone held you?”

The words are soft and low, and Chitose feels himself freeze.

Tachibana isn’t supposed to _say_ it!

They’re supposed to be men now, right? Is he supposed to want to be held this much, at his age? Not that he usually cares about what’s normal for men his age, but Tachibana always has.

“I...”

“What’s the good of him, if he doesn’t even do this much?”

Maybe it’s because he’s exhausted from crying himself out, but Chitose just lays there against his best friend’s chest, utterly uncomprehending. “Huh?” he finally manages to ask. “Who?”

“That Shiraishi.”

It occurs to Chitose, probably too late, that his stupid, wicked little plan to make Tachibana jealous may have worked a bit too well this time. Noted: it works better with men than with women, apparently. Tachibana had never said anything when he’d made out with Tachibana’s girlfriends right in front of him, but drop a couple of hints that he thinks Shiraishi is pretty and he actually gets results? He nearly keeps it going, teases that Shiraishi is usually the one being held and they both like it that way, but his throat hurts, his eyes hurt, his head hurts, and he’s exhausted. Maybe he’s even, finally, too exhausted to be an asshole for no reason. “I’m not...we aren’t...mm.”

“You send kisses to everyone on your team, huh?”

_I’m not ready for this._

Chitose is ready, maybe, for the slow dance, the moves without captures, the long game of them tiptoeing closer and closer to the big truth--that he, Chitose Senri, is a certified homo, target locked onto his best friend of a decade. Chitose isn’t sure when he’d become certain that Tachibana knows. Maybe it was after Shiori. Maybe it was the time he’d showed up at Tachibana’s house in the middle of the night, because he’d been wandering in the rain again, and Tachibana had looked out his window and seen him, standing still outside his window, staring up at the soft glowing rectangle. Maybe it was some time he hadn’t realized was pivotal, and Tachibana had caught him staring in the showers after practice. He doesn’t know. But since they were twelve, he’s been pretty sure that Tachibana knows. He’s never been the best at hiding the way he feels. It sounds exhausting. Better to have it out there in the open.

But a part of him knows that it’s very, very possible that he’s wrong. Tachibana might _not_ know. Chitose might be convincing himself that he does, because if Tachibana knows, then surely, it’s on him to make the next move, if anything is to come of it, and then Chitose isn’t just being a coward.

So they go backwards and forwards. _I love you_ , Chitose says, but never aloud, and strains to hear a reply to the words that he doesn’t have the courage to say. If they acknowledge it, say it out loud, it means Tachibana _has_ to answer. Has to say he’s fine with it, he’s not fine with it, he feels the same, he feels different, he’d like to if he were a homo but he _isn’t_...

Chitose has considered every possible move. Saiki Kanpatsu no Kiwami only works on the tennis court, but they’re always on a court in his mind, or maybe the court is just wherever the two of them are. For almost every move, he’s predicted how it will go. His imagination is good, supplying Tachibana’s voice whenever he needs it to, rarely saying anything he’d want to hear.

_“You’re...that way? That’s fine, it’s not as if it’s about me, right? Just keep it that way.”_ Followed by an awkward silence.

 _“You...about me? Aha...Chitose...I’m not sure what to say. You know it isn’t like that for me, right? We can still be friends?”_ Followed by a fist bump.

 _“What, really? Um, I have a girlfriend. And I’m not...”_ Followed by his own hasty denials that neither of them believe.

 _“That doesn’t matter to me, as long as you can play tennis.”_ Followed by a shrug.

 _“Shit, don’t tell people. You want to get in trouble?”_ Followed by a nervous look.

 _“You feel...like that? For me?”_ Followed by a kiss.

The only one that feels unnatural is the last one. Even _his_ brain can’t supply some images. He can picture kissing Tachibana in any position at any angle. What he can’t imagine is how the two of them get there, how it starts.

“Shiraishi,” he says, because it’s been a long time since he’s said anything and he can feel Tachibana’s question lingering in the air, “will go along with almost anything as long as you tell him it’s a joke.”

What wouldn’t he give to see Tachibana’s eyes right now? He can’t think of anything. Nothing he has left, at least. “How far you let that joke go?”

Tachibana has imagined it, Chitose realizes abruptly. Tachibana has imagined him and Shiraishi together, maybe been tormented by the image. Chitose wonders whether Tachibana thinks he bends Shiraishi over something, or whether he’s parting his thighs for Mr. Perfect in Tachibana’s imagination. _Does either choice make you angrier? Does either choice make you hard?_ Maybe if he could see Tachibana’s face, he’d know. Maybe he’d play it up, see how far he can take it.

Chitose is selfish. He knows it. There’s the chance, slender as it is, that Tachibana might want him, too--just not the same way. Might not mind the idea of the two of them together--just for fun, just for stress relief. Just guys being guys. Might be into the idea of rolling around, getting his rocks off with someone warm and willing. Chitose is very certain that this would be the absolute worst option. _I’ll have everything I want, or nothing at all_ , he thinks, not for the first time. Never touching Tachibana’s lips in his life would be better than letting Tachibana fuck him senseless and hearing, _That was fun, I’ll call you._

That chance, more than any fear of rejection, is what keeps him quiet after all this time.

There has to be an answer he can give that will preserve whatever fragile peace is letting Tachibana hold him right now. There’s always a move like that on the board. If he’s the Black King, maybe Shiraishi is unexpectedly his Queen.

Chitose castles in his mind, rearranging and consolidating, relinquishing the center for the time being. “Not _that_ far,” he says, and feels Tachibana relax.

Even if Tachibana is only holding him because he’s a mess, a wreck, blind and emotional and obviously afraid, at least he’ll have this memory.

It’s impossible to tell how much later Tachibana suddenly says, “Fuck. The food.”

Chitose, dozing on his chest, twitches with a little, “Mm?”

“I got you basashi. You should eat it while it’s cold.”

Chitose might be drooling, just a little bit. “Ahhh, Kippei really does love me! I’ll even let you feed it to me,” he says, mask firmly back in place now that his head is on a bit straighter. “It would be a shame to waste even a drop of sauce.”

“No waste is that guy’s thing, isn’t it?”

Right. The jealousy thing had been funny at first, but now it’s getting old, and Chitose sighs. “Don’t be rude, just feed me. I’m relinquishing my VIP seat for delicious prancy pony meat.”

“The last time you called it that, you made An cry,” Tachibana says, but his voice is lighter, and he’s gentle when he moves, leaning Chitose back on his pillows once more. He can still feel the warmth from Tachibana’s body, and snuggles unrepentantly into it, like a girl with her boyfriend’s oversized sweater. All right, he’s the oversized one, but he can’t help that part.

The smell of soy and ginger hits his nose, and his mouth starts watering. “What cut did you get?” he asks eagerly, his fictional romance forgotten in the face of imminent food. “Neck?”

“How much do you think I spent?” Tachibana asks, and taps a fingertip on Chitose’s chin. “Open.”

Fictional romance, remembered with interest! Chitose opens his mouth, thoughts scrambled into a thousand horny directions. Then the cold meat hits his tongue, and they scatter into the wind, like every other future that isn’t mean to be.

Fictional romance, forgotten again in the face of deliciousness. Not fatty and tasty and soft enough to be the neck, but still delicious and tastes like home, and Chitose chews with absolute glee. It’s good enough, he decides, that he can throw Tachibana a bone. “Shiraishi can’t eat basashi. Can’t eat any sashimi. Sensitive stomach.”

“How perfect can you be like that?” Tachibana mutters, clearly not thinking Chitose can hear him.

Chitose’s lips twitch. “You’re just mad that he beat Fuji Shuusuke,” he says airily, then promptly opens his mouth when Tachibana taps his chin.

“Why would I care about that?”

Guarded. Tachibana sounds guarded. Chitose chews quickly, leaping on that tone. “You came all the way to the semifinals match to cheer him on, didn’t you? Mm, maybe the two of you have made some _jokes_ together, too. He seems like the kind of person that might take them too far, if you don’t stop him.”

“It, uh. No, he’s not...did you get any sauce in that bite?”

Oh.

Oh, _no_.

The Forbidden Option.

Gay, or gay enough. Just not for _him_.

Chitose’s stomach turns over. For the first time, he’s grateful for the blindfold. His eyes would be far too easy to read right now, he knows. Maybe he could convince Shiraishi to mail Fuji Shuusuke a package of flowers. Maybe he could convince one of his less moral friends, like Yuuji or Zaizen, to include a label that says ‘ _edible flowers for salads and cakes’_ on top. Yuuji would do it in a heartbeat, if Chitose said he saw Fuji make eyes at Koharu.

The horse meat sits heavy and cold in his stomach. He keeps eating whenever Tachibana taps his chin, but doesn’t taste it anymore.

Better yet, he’s stayed in contact with Niou Masaharu, who knows some excellent cat-watching spots in Kobe. Niou seems like the sort of casual acquaintance Chitose wouldn’t mind murdering someone with. Shiraishi could bring Kirihara. It could be fun for everyone. Except for Shiraishi, Chitose doesn’t think any of them would particularly mind disassembling Fuji Shuusuke into component parts, dissolving all the fleshy bits with quicklime, and sinking the evidence into the ocean to get mixed up with yakuza bones.

Fun.

Tachibana might have imagined him rolling around with Shiraishi, but that’s nothing to what Chitose’s helpfully overactive mind supplies him now. Tachibana finishes feeding him, then excuses himself to put the trash away, leaving Chitose to envision blond and light brown hair, Tokyo accents melding together, Tachibana leaving bite marks all over Fuji’s neck and shoulders, those sweetly smirking eyes dark with pleasure. He wonders if Fuji has fucked Tachibana, and finds himself erect and sick all at once.

They’d be a pretty couple, he thinks, and murmurs something vague when Tachibana bids him goodnight, closing the door with a click. He wonders if it’s just fucking, or if they’re in love. God, he’d been right. Fuji is the one to watch out for, on Seigaku.

He touches himself, and isn’t gentle about it. There’s something deeply masochistic in the way he squeezes his cock with his left hand, and plunges three fingers into himself from behind at the same time. The wind rustles outside, and he savagely hopes Tachibana can hear him, hear the quickening of his breath, the harsh panting when he turns onto his side to give himself better access. It would be better if he had something long and hard to shove inside himself, but he’d left that in his apartment in Osaka, in a box with porn that doesn’t have tits in it and the undershirt he’d stolen from Tachibana’s hamper four days before the accident.

Tachibana came to his game against Seigaku--the first time he’d seen Chitose play in a year--and cheered _Fuji_ on. Chitose had been jealous then, but in a friend way, a tennis way, and it had made him cheer Shiraishi on even harder.

Not the kind of jealousy that makes him bite his pillow, fisting his cock fast and hard, fucking himself and thinking of Fuji Shuusuke with his arms wound lovingly around Tachibana’s neck, putting his hands all over what Chitose had claimed for his own before Fuji fucking Shuusuke even met him. Not the kind of jealousy where he imagines Tachibana’s warm brown eyes dilated in lust, clinging to Fuji Shuusuke’s back, gripping at soft brown hair that never needs to be straightened. Not the kind of jealousy where he shoves his fingers into himself, not to make himself feel good, but because the odd sharp ache makes him feel like he’s being _fucked_ , like someone is treating his body the way he’s currently treating his mind, unwanted intrusions lancing into him again and again. Not the kind where he wonders if Tachibana has ever sucked Fuji Shuusuke off, wonders if Tachibana had kissed him afterwards, if he’s ever let Fuji Shuusuke pound into him and made little purring noises.

When he comes into his hand, Chitose gasps, then screams into the pillow. He feels himself shake, and screams again, both of his hands coming up to grip it, driving a fist into the soft stuffing as if it’s a young, sweet-faced tennis player’s unprotected stomach, as if he could shove his hand into Fuji’s ribcage, snatch his heart, and squeeze it until it explodes in his hand.

**14**

Kippei is fourteen, his head is shaved, and he’s clutching a newspaper cutout in one hand.

The envelope is printed neatly, the sender’s name sending him into heart palpitations before he sees the given name _Miyuki_ next to it. Inside the envelope is a short note in Miyuki’s careful hiragana, and a photograph.

_Lion Nii-san,_

_I’m still mad at you. You made him change. It’s not fair. He doesn’t laugh as much anymore. He just walks and walks and walks. He said not to write you. On his birthday he waited but you didn’t call._

_He has a new team now. They gonna beat you. Prepare yourself._

_Chitose Miyuki_

Kippei stares at the paper, wondering if this counts as a challenge notice. Prepare himself? How? He doesn’t play anymore, doesn’t deserve to.

He unfolds the photograph, and stares.

It’s different than the photos they took together at Shishigaku, the whole team lined up in two rows, standing solemnly for the camera. This team is grinning, taking relaxed poses up and down a flight of stairs, looking as if the photographer had just told a great joke. It isn’t arranged like Shishigaku, with him and Senri in the center, eyes defiantly daring anyone to try and touch them, the rest of the team giving them almost imperceptible space. Kippei traces the figures of nine men, ranging from the striking to the forgettable. Two of them have their arms around each other, yellow and green jerseys zipped all the way up. One looks young, very young, and brimming with a riot of energy, not wearing his uniform at all. One is bald and large, and gives him a weird, familiar feeling. There are a couple of forgettable-looking guys with stiff dyed hair, though he can’t help but notice the one in the center is handsome, cocky, and sits as if he knows exactly who’s going to win every match he plays.

Maybe his gaze is drawn to that one because next to him, sprawled lazily on the stairs, one elbow resting on the blond’s shoulder, is Chitose Senri.

It may have been months, but Kippei would know that hooded, long-lashed, calculating look anywhere, not to mention the waves of hair so black it’s almost blue, the skin like barley tea, the long legs extending underneath the white shorts. It’s hard to tell when he’s sitting, but Kippei thinks Senri might have gotten taller again. His eyes trace every curve and line, from the neck of his jersey to the wisps of hair in his face, from the point of one shoe to the smirk on his lips, before it hits him.

Senri is playing tennis again.

His face is in profile in the shot, and Kippei strains to see anything amiss, but can’t.

Slowly, the ever-present smell of blood and sweat, the sound of the ball hitting the ground, the ambulance sirens, the squeak of shoes on the court, the overwhelming sense memory that is best summed up as _That Day_ , starts to fade. It’s still there, still strong, but maybe for the first time in months, Kippei feels like he can breathe around it.

_Just wait._

_I’m on my way._


	7. Monday | Almost Sixteen Years Old

**Monday**

Chitose pretends to sleep for half the day. He’s not tired, almost vibrating with wanderlust and boredom, but the idea of talking to Tachibana right now makes him feel too melancholy to breathe. He wonders if he’ll ever work up the stupid, self-sacrificing courage to tell Tachibana that he’d rather take a hundred _abare-dama_ hits directly into his optical nerve than ever see Tachibana in the same postal code as Fuji Shuusuke.

He ignores every attempt Tachibana makes to talk to him, perversely pleased when Tachibana sounds a bit forlorn.

He spends an hour contemplating murder, another hour imagining Fuji and Tachibana fucking, then a couple more hours imagining being a puff of cotton blown out to sea.

For once, it doesn’t help.

Voices filter in through the window--no, just one voice, but in conversation. Tachibana, in the guest room, on the phone. He sounds friendly. Chitose’s hand ventures to his own phone, and really considers whether he has the balls to call Niou Masaharu. He would have done it, back when he was in Shishigaku. Then again, back then, he wouldn’t have needed anyone’s help. He’d have just ended the bastard himself.

“Yeah, still down in Kyushu. No, no, I appreciate the call.... Heh.... Yeah. Another couple days at least.... Uh...I don’t know. Thursday? Friday? Are you free then? Friday. Sounds good. I’ll see you then. It’ll be fun.... Don’t ask me, you know I’ll pick the same place every time.... Sounds good. See you then. Bye.”

How long? Before the Nationals last year? God forbid, that would mean they were a thing during U-17. Had Tachibana been sneaking off with Fuji while Chitose was stuck watching Mizuki Hajime polish his tableware, hearing Yanagi Renji and Inui Sadaharu roleplay future careers while sitting increasingly close to each other? Shiraishi might have seen.

It would be the sort of thing that Shiraishi might even _know_ , but would have kept quiet about, to spare Chitose’s feelings. Had Shiraishi seen them? It’s easy to imagine Tachibana walking Fuji back to room 201, right next door to his own, lingering for a final sweet goodnight kiss.

Chitose wants to vomit.

Tachibana’s phone rings again. _Desperate slut_ , Chitose thinks bitterly. “Hello?... Hey! No, not doing anything, just a little exercise.... Thanks. I’ll see you next week.... Yeah, I promise.... You’d better not be slacking off while I’m not there.”

Maybe not a desperate slut this time. Maybe just a kouhai. Fine. He supposes he can allow that.

Not five minutes later, Tachibana’s phone rings _again_ , and Chitose feels himself growing steadily more miffed. He’s supposed to be ignoring Tachibana, not being ignored.

“Hello?... Hey, An. Thanks. Yeah. Still here.... We don’t know yet. How’s Miyuki?.... You can tell her, we’ll know tomorrow.”

The urge to vomit lessens slightly when Tachibana refers to them as _we_. Slightly.

When the phone rings for the fourth time, Chitose frowns.

“Hello? Ah, hey. Didn’t expect to hear from you today.... No, I just--yeah. Thanks for calling.... Good, that’s good.... Thanks. Right. Take care, Dad.”

After the sixth call, Chitose is pretty sure he’s garbage, and might need to be thrown out the window for collection. In his defense, the days all _do_ sort of blend together at the moment.

He thinks it might be early afternoon when Tachibana knocks, then opens his door again. “Hey. I’m going to the store for some skewers and onions. You want anything?”

With what feels like supreme effort, Chitose smiles, and reaches out a hand, waving it more or less randomly in the air. “I want to go on a date.”

“...Uh huh.”

“You can put me in the wheelchair.” Chitose hates saying the words, but this is his last day when Tachibana _has_ to be at his side, all day, and he’s going to take what he can get, milking it for all it’s worth. “Take me to the big teahouse near Tamukae, on Tsuruya. I have money in my bag.”

“Chitose. You don’t have to.”

It’s easier to glare with eyes. Chitose wonders if he’ll be any good at it when he’s got the blindfold off, but his eyes are glassy and unfocused. Maybe it’ll be creepy. He hopes so. That’s the proper way to be a disturbing prophet. Maybe he should practice making them move in unpredictable directions, just to freak people out. “Don’t play coy with me. I’m taking you on a teahouse date. It’s my last day with Nurse Kippei, so do what I say for one more day.”

“Shouldn’t you do what I say today? Like rest?”

“I might die if I don’t get out of this bed,” Chitose says bluntly, and sighs. “Kippei. Please.”

There’s silence. Then, Tachibana mutters, “Fine. Get up, I’ll help you to the door where I put the chair.”

The halls of his house are wide enough that they can walk side by side, Chitose’s arm around Tachibana’s shoulders, Tachibana’s arm around his waist. Chitose wonders idly if Tachibana likes being taller than Fuji, likes being able to rest his chin on Fuji’s head from behind, likes to feel like a big man around him.

 _You’re not taking him on a birthday date, though_ , he thinks viciously at the ghost of Fuji Shuusuke. _I am._

For a moment, he considers going up to Tokyo this weekend, sight or no sight, and finding Fuji--not to murder, probably, but maybe to fall into old habits, and see if he could suck the taste of Tachibana off of someone else’s lips. Not the taste, exactly, but to try and figure out from the girl’s reactions how Tachibana had kissed her, from her posture how he’d touched her, and with an imagination like his, it’s so easy to fit himself into that space and pretend the girl isn’t in the way.

He’d never hated those girls, though. He’d never felt much of anything about them. He does, just for this moment, while Tachibana is kneeling to slip his geta onto his feet, hate Fuji Shuusuke.

Tsuruya Tea House is large and traditional, and Tachibana gets them there by the simple expedient of jogging while pushing, as if he’s a young father out for a run with his stroller. It’s a little bit terrifying, and Chitose clutches the arms of the wheelchair, but when Tachibana has made up his mind to take care of someone and protect them, nothing bad will happen. 

Chitose can see the place perfectly in his memory, hears the bustle and knows they’re busy. “Two,” Tachibana tells the hostess, who prevaricates about which tables they can sit at, since many of them have stairs. “It’s fine,” Tachibana assures her. “Stairs aren’t a problem. I’ll take care of it.”

“I can walk a little,” Chitose assures her, and then hears a swift intake of breath.

“You--Tachibana? Chitose?”

Chitose recognizes her voice before Tachibana does, he thinks. At least, he does before Tachibana manages to ask, startled, “Shiori?”

That’s the thing about coming back home, Chitose thinks wearily. There are ghosts everywhere. Three, two, one--

“Chitose-kun, what happened to your eyes?”

He gives her as much of a smile as he can manage, and wishes he were anywhere else. “Little accident. Should be all better in a little while.”

There’s a reason he doesn’t ramble through Kumamoto anymore if he can avoid it. The only reason he usually comes down here is to visit family, the only reason he wanders because Miyuki has gotten herself lost again and their parents can never seem to find her.

“Here, I’ll show you to your table.”

Chitose lurches into motion, Tachibana wheeling him through the teahouse after Shiori. He wonders idly if her chest has gotten any bigger, or if she’s gotten better at kissing. He’d heard that she’d started dating Daimaru, once he’d made Captain, so as far as he’s concerned, she’s not really worth noticing.

He knows the teahouse. The way everyone speaks, the sound bouncing off the walls, combined with the motion at an easy, familiar walking pace through the building, forms a sort of pseudo-map in his mind. This was Tachibana’s favorite restaurant, once upon a time, even if Chitose thinks everything Tachibana makes is better. When the wheelchair stops, he stands, ignoring the throb in his head and taking two confident strides forward, then down the two small stairs.

“Chitose!” comes the surprised cry from Tachibana, and the gasp from Shiori, but the steps are exactly where he’d thought they would be, and something nervous uncoils from his chest.

He settles himself into seiza at the low table, and smiles up at where he’s fairly certain the two of them must be. “Let’s have tea!”

The food isn’t anything special. It never is. What’s special is the challenge that Chitose sets himself. Now that he’s concentrating, it’s not so hard. If he arranges everything first, he can see in his mind’s eye just where it all is. He counts his mistakes instead of his successes--drops his chopsticks once, bumps his teacup with the back of his hand twice, misses the little sandwiches and has to feel around twice--but he doesn’t drop anything onto himself, and he doesn’t need any help. “Sorry if you had plans for your birthday, Kippei,” he says breezily, hoping Tachibana is fucking marveling at how skilled he’s appearing. “I’m monopolizing the whole day, though.”

“I didn’t have plans.”

“Ehhh? No one was throwing you a party?”

“I’m sixteen, not six. My parents haven’t had a party for me in years.”

“Yeah, but I used to take you on surprise birthday dates.”

“They were surprises because you never did it on my birthday!”

“Well, exactly! Then it wouldn’t have been a surprise!”

They’d come here, once or twice, but not on the special surprise birthday dates. On Tachibana’s birthday, or close enough, Chitose likes to surprise him with unexpected trips. Once they climbed the outside of Kumamoto Castle after dark, hiding from guards and clinging to crumbling stone, trying to keep from laughing and giving themselves away. Once, Chitose had taken him to an underground cavern he’d discovered, and they’d stayed out all night, watching the sun rise through an odd rock formation in the cliffs above. Most of their explorations hadn’t been nearly so spectacular, just rambling around in places Chitose had found and wanted to keep for the two of them, small wonders hidden in the everyday that only Tachibana had understood.

They had to be surprises, because going on a date _on_ his birthday is what couples do. They had to be surprises, because if they were plans, Tachibana could cancel on him, and that would be devastating. They started as surprises so he didn’t interfere with what Tachibana’s family would be doing, but he’d realized early on that it wasn’t too much of a concern, except from An. He’d played tug-of-war over Tachibana’s birthday dates with her enough to realize that.

“How’s your team doing at Nationals?” he asks, because Fudomine Middle School is definitely Tachibana’s team, even if he’s graduated and gone on to high school. How strange. He can’t imagine thinking of Shitenhouji Middle School’s team this year as _his_. Then again, he barely thought of it that way last year.

“Good. They took second place in the Kantou, so everyone’s really taking notice. I’m betting on it being us and Rikkai in the finals, but it’s too soon to tell, obviously.”

Numbers and possibilities swirl in Chitose’s mind, and he shakes his head thoughtfully. “I don’t think so,” he murmurs, and nibbles on a tea sandwich. “But I’ve been wrong before.”

“Hey. It’s not like you to start doubting your way of seeing the world.”

“Ah...you’re right.” His thoughts are wandering again. It’s been worse, since the operation. At first, he’d thought it was the pain, or maybe the pills, though he hadn’t taken those since coming home. Now, though, it seems to just be the way he is, thoughts chasing each other around, going wandering around his mind when his feet are forced to stay still. “I can’t wait until I can go walking again,” he says wistfully.

“Will...would it be the same? Would you still want to?”

Chitose hears what Tachibana is trying to ask, and he nods, unbothered. “It was never about what I could see. It’s about following the currents of the wind. Or sometimes, my feet know where I need to be better than I do.”

He can almost see Tachibana shaking his head. “If you say so.”

So straightforward. So determined. Chitose finishes his tea, and because it’s Tachibana’s birthday and he sort of remembers how to be a good friend, he leans forward, smiles, and says, “Tell me about your team’s lineup.”

It’s soothing, to hear Tachibana expostulate about matchups and battles. He talks about it differently than Shiraishi did. He worries less, has more hope, even if Chitose privately thinks that a good bit of that hope is unfounded. He hears about Ibu’s Spot technique, Ishida’s Hadokyuu (how nostalgic), Kamio’s Rhythm, Uchimura and Mori’s partnership, Sakurai’s flexibility.

Chitose eats, and listens, and starts to feel like he might be a whole person even without his eyes.

**16**

Kippei is fourteen years old when he realizes he’s in love with his best friend, when he finds out Senri won’t be coming back to Shishigaku, and it leaves a hole in his heart.

Or maybe he’s twelve years old, and he can’t imagine a future for the two of them that isn’t the two of them. That’s scary, so he stops saying _Senri_ and starts saying _Chitose_ when they get to middle school, and ignores the hurt, nervous look in his best friend’s eyes.

Or maybe he’s ten years old, and he goes to bed every night thinking about what he’s going to tell Senri in the morning, wishing they could have a sleepover every night, thinking adults are stupid for not moving in with their best friends.

Or maybe he’s eight years old, and he and Senri are sharing a futon on the floor of Senri’s dad’s pottery studio, holding hands late into the night, and no one is coming to separate them.

Or maybe he’s six years old, and he feels safe for the first time around someone taller than he is.

Maybe he’s fifteen, and he knows now that it doesn’t matter if it’s a man or a woman as long as it’s not Senri (even though it’s better if it’s a man). He hears that loud redhead on Senri’s new team excitedly insist, “Chitose brings the spring!” and is irrationally angry that he’s not the only one who’s always thought that.

Maybe he’s thirteen, and thinking privately that Chitose sounds like he’s saying _I love you_ whenever he says _Buchou_ , and he’s saying it back with every _Fukubuchou_.

Maybe he’s eleven, and Senri is standing outside his window looking like a stray kitten, and his heart does a double-flip because Senri, he realizes, is prettier than any girl he knows.

Maybe he’s nine, the first time he sees Senri play with a Prince Triple Threat RIP, when the motion is so beautiful and graceful that it sort of makes him angry and he doesn’t know why.

Maybe he’s seven, and Senri sees him really angry for the first time, and laughs, and makes him feel calm.

Kippei is nearly sixteen years old when he gets a text from Senri. **Come down to Kumamoto on Thursday. I have something to show you.**

And he goes to Kumamoto, two days early, because he’s in love with his best friend. He isn’t ready for Senri’s family to tell him tearfully that they’re so glad he’s here, because it hasn’t gone quite right. He isn’t as good a liar as Senri, but he fudges it, because they’re so grateful that their son actually reached out, and now they won’t need to rely on Senri’s grandmother while they’re getting Miyuki settled at school.

Senri looks small in the hospital bed. He doesn’t look like a man who’s fifteen centimeters taller and fifteen kilograms heavier than Kippei, he looks like a kid. Maybe that’s because of the blindfold. Even after the accident, his eyes were always captivating, drawing everyone in.

Or maybe they’d just drawn Kippei in, because he can’t remember why there should be a future where the two of them aren’t playing together.

He takes Senri’s hand, sitting by his bedside once they move him home, giving up on trying to make him eat. “Hey,” he says softly, and tries to tell himself that he’d do this for any friend in a bind.

“What?” Senri murmurs. He’s not awake, not really. He’s always mumbled distractingly in his sleep, sometimes whole sentences that sort of make sense, just not in the context he’s using them. Nouns and verbs in the right place, structurally, but the whole doesn’t make any sense.

“Are you awake?”

“I can’t believe not one of those squares has been assembled.”

Not awake. Kippei swallows, and squeezes Senri’s hand. “I don’t want to do this anymore, Senri,” he says, voice soft. His shoulders feel heavy. His neck is tight, like it can’t forget all the times Senri had rubbed it after practice, resenting him for not still being in Kyushu with someone who treats it correctly. “I don’t want to be half a country apart anymore. There’s so much...there’s so much I should be telling you.”

He fumbles for words, wipes his face with the hand not holding Senri’s. “Dad left. They didn’t announce it or anything, but he doesn’t come home anymore. An’s sort of dating someone. You should be there to help me beat him up. My team...I wish I could show you. It’s everything we were missing, at Shishigaku. But you found that, too, didn’t you?”

All of a sudden, the words start coming, and he can’t stop them, jumping from subject to subject, two years of pent up conversations that he can finally have, even if one-sided. Even if Senri is lying there, a bandage over his sparkling eyes, looking kind of like he’s dead.

“Maybe being with you so much distracted me, but I think they were just assholes. Especially Daimaru. Man, fuck that guy.

“Gokutora’s getting older. She misses you. You know, as much as a dog can. She gets all excited whenever she hears someone wearing geta. But I guess she’s probably just picking up the way I get excited, too. Dogs do that.

“I heard you didn’t join the team in high school. I thought you might be focusing on something else, but...no, I guess I didn’t. I knew. I didn’t know you’d do something like _this_ , but I knew. I knew in our game at U-17.

“Do you think about that day? The way it felt? To be synced up with you like that...it was like I could hear your heartbeat, even from the other side of the court. I think if it was like that before, I never would have hurt you.

“...so Kamio was running for the ball, right? And he’s in the rhythm, and his opponent just hits this smash, you would have sworn it was going to rip him in two, but he jumped back, he totally dodged it, but he had to do this stupid little hop, it was so hard not to laugh. You’d have laughed.

“This was supposed to be the year. I was trying not to think about it, like I have any right to. But when I’m trying to fall asleep, I think about what it would have been like if I wasn’t such a careless bastard with you. If we went to Nationals. We wouldn’t have to win, just make best 8 again or something, enough to really get our names out there. I’d have told you then, I think. How I feel. About you. I kept saying I would, if we won Nationals, or we took number one pair in the country.

“But I might have waited for this year. We were supposed to be in tournaments. And if we did well enough, we could go pro. You’d have been so good at it, you’re so bad at school. My folks would have hated it, but they don’t really care much. I’d have had a hell of a time keeping An in school, she’s got tennis balls for brains now. Like we do. Did. Me, at least. I don’t know what you’ve got in yours. Fucking chess pieces rattling around or something.

“I love Fudomine. Don’t get me wrong. The way they look at me...makes me feel like I’m doing something worth doing. For other people, not just for myself. Like I’m not such a bastard after all. Sometimes An looks at me...and she’s scared. She heard I was playing someone at a public court once and grabbed one of my kouhai and dragged him out there. Like I was gonna kill the guy or something. I wasn’t _that_ bad, was I? I didn’t think I was. Maybe I was. It didn’t matter until it was you.

“Would you have said anything, if you thought I was that bad? I don’t think you would have. You always acted like it was funny. I thought it was, when you were around. Maybe if you called me a dick and told me to knock it off, I wouldn’t have hit that ball, that day.

“I’m sorry. I fucked it up. I’m the one who killed it.”

He squeezes that cool hand, then lets go of it, turning away to rub his hands over his face again. “Please say you hear me.”

He turns away, feeling the tears start to well up, and shoves them down. It’s too much his own fault, because even if he isn’t psychic, he can see that much. If he’d been more careful, Senri wouldn’t be lying stretched out like he’s on a bier, because even if he can atone for what he’s done, he’s never been able to fix it. He’s good with his hands, but not so good with his heart.

He swallows hard. Being a man means accepting the way things are. Things are shitty. He accepts that. He can accept it for himself. But accepting it for someone else...

Movement from the bed. It wouldn’t be the first time, and Kippei readies himself to hear more nonsense words. Instead...

“Kippei?”

Instead, his heart feels like it pounds too hard for a moment, then sort of melts. It’s the catch of the double P, the way it lingers on Senri’s lips before he exhales the rest with a sigh, that makes him want to taste those sounds when they come out, to trace Senri’s mouth with his tongue and drink in every little noise he makes. For a single, wild second, he considers it. Senri wouldn’t be able to stop him.

But that’s always been the problem.

Because even if Senri found something in him to love, it wouldn’t erase the past. Not until there’s a future.

So Kippei runs a hand back through his hair, sits on the side of the bed, and waits for Senri to wake up completely, thinking that at least he’ll be able to stare as much as he wants for a week, without ever worrying about being caught looking.


	8. Tuesday | And After

**Tuesday**

“The cab is out front. You ready?”

No. Yes. Nothing could be worse than waiting to find out, except finding out. Chitose has spent the last week longing for this moment, and now that it’s here, it’s fucking terrifying.

The blindness, he’s sort of gotten used to. If it weren’t for how sick he’d felt over the past week, he’s pretty sure he could get a good handle on the whole thing. The last couple of days, he’s been able to walk a bit, to feed himself, to make it to the bathroom, to shower, all without much assistance. Another week, and he knows he’ll be wandering, cane in hand, and memorizing chess pieces with his fingertips.

Or, in a week, he’ll be on a tennis court, and see things with depth perception for the first time in two years.

The problem is...

The problem is 179 centimeters with yellow hair. The problem is the love of his fucking life. The problem is going to be back in Tokyo tomorrow, dropping every sign he’d ever lived in Kyushu from his dialect, whether Chitose can see after the procedure or not.

The problem, now that it’s come to this, is that Chitose doesn’t want it to end.

And the bigger problem with being a capricious, changeable, unpredictable bastard, he thinks ruefully, is that even _he_ doesn’t always know what he’s going to do before he does it.

“Hey, Kippei,” he hears his mouth say, and his heart thuds hard against his ribcage, almost drowning him out. “I’m in love with you.”

Wouldn’t that be funny, if he really said it?

Out loud, like that, with no preamble?

The silence moves, and Chitose knows, with a sense of dislocated calm, that he _had_ spoken out loud. Now that he’s done it, it isn’t actually that funny at all.

The words sit between them.

Chitose’s mouth is dry.

Too late now, to smile and say he’d been joking.

Too late now, for Tachibana to pretend he hadn’t heard.

Too late.

He clears his throat, feels his tongue sort of stick to the roof of his mouth, and sighs. “So. That’s it, then.”

“...What?”

The word is quiet, shaken. Chitose isn’t sure what he expected. He shrugs, and says, “I give up. The win is yours, White King, but at least it’s on my own terms. Ah, I’m selfish, though, so please get me to the cab before you go. I’m still blind, after all.”

“The fuck are you talking about?” Tachibana sounds angry. Chitose thinks that might be good. “What do you mean, before I go? Where am I going?”

“Back to Fuji Shuusuke, I imagine,” Chitose says, with a airy lightness he doesn’t feel. Mostly, he feels empty, like he’d kept that secret inside so long it had rattled and bounced off of everything, wearing down the furniture of his existence until he was entirely hollow except for those words.

“...You are such a fucking pain in my ass,” Tachibana growls, and Chitose hears the sound of the door being yanked open. “Can you walk? Or am I wheeling you out to the cab?”

“...I can walk.” He thinks he can. Chitose feels oddly uncertain, now that he’s made his declaration, about what it means. “Just give me your arm. Unless--“

Unless nothing, because Tachibana’s arm is in his, warm and solid, and Chitose feels a little choked up.

“Did you have to say it right _now_?” Tachibana asks, as they make their careful way down the stairs in front of the house, instead of the slope out the side door. “And what the fuck is that about Fuji Shuusuke? How are we supposed to talk about this in the cab, or at the hospital? How about half an hour ago, what was wrong with half an hour ago?”

“Why?” Chitose asks, gripping Tachibana’s arm tighter when he nearly misses a step. “What would have happened half an hour ago?”

Tachibana makes a strangled sound in his throat, his own grip so tight Chitose sort of feels like he could collapse entirely and would never hit the ground. “Maybe we could have talked like adults,” he hisses, so close to Chitose’s ear that he can feel the warmth of his breath. “And I could have told you that you’re an idiot.”

“For...”

“For being jealous of someone I spent five minutes with a year ago, for one damned thing.” Tachibana pulls him to a stop, though Chitose’s mental map tells him there’s another half dozen steps left to go before they get down to street level. “For sleeping through my confession last week, for another.”

That’s two huge truths, so close together that they make Chitose’s head spin. “Kippei...”

“Who are you calling your White King, anyway?” Tachibana demands crossly. “Haven’t you seen Fudomine’s uniforms?”

“Well, yeah--“

“And when we play doubles again, you’re the Black Queen,” Tachibana says bluntly, cutting him off. “You taught me how to play, so don’t forget something important like being the most powerful piece on the board.”

Chitose feels like he’s taken those pills again. His head is swimming, pulse thudding in his eyes.

“And _mostly_ ,” Tachibana continues, starting them down the stairs again, until Chitose hears a car door open, “you’re an idiot for assuming I’d leave you like this before your operation. What kind of friend do you think I am?”

“Ehh...it’s not that I thought you’d...” Except he had, and he knows it, and Tachibana knows it. Guilt niggles in Chitose’s stomach, a familiar emotion. He hadn’t trusted Tachibana with the truth back in Shishigaku, either, had hidden the injury until it got so bad he had to quit the team.

He feels the car underneath his hand, and pauses. “What now?”

“Get in the car.”

“No, tell me what happens now.”

He hears a frustrated exhale, and then is summarily yanked into the car, which is a lot more difficult to stop when he doesn’t know where the tug is coming from.

“Please, no roughhousing,” says the cabbie politely, and Chitose hears the door click shut, followed by the cab smoothly accelerating.

He turns to Tachibana, blindfold notwithstanding. “So? What happens now?”

“Well, since you picked the worst possible time to say anything, nothing _fun_ ,” Tachibana growls, with such sudden heat in the words that Chitose feels color spring up into his face, his hands tightening in his lap. There’s a long moment, and then Tachibana says, so quietly the cabbie probably wouldn’t be able to hear unless he was really trying, “He plays with your racquet, Chitose.”

The words plunge into him like a rock into a still pool. Chitose’s imagination takes over again, far too vividly for the backseat of a cab, but this time he can’t stop the images--Fuji squirming in Tachibana’s lap, Tachibana breathing _his_ name instead--and has to lean back against the wall of the cab, dizzy.

“Yeah, that kind of thing is why I didn’t want to have this conversation right now.”

“Tell me,” Chitose insists, reaching out to grab Tachibana’s hand, missing twice, and finally waiting for Tachibana to grab it. He does, after a long moment, and squeezes.

“I...”

Chitose can feel the hesitation in his voice. “Say something, Kippei. Please.”

“You really want me to?” Tachibana asks, voice strained. “Before the procedure? Before you know? It’s not the kind of thing you can take back.”

“I...”

Possibilities swirl in Chitose’s mind. The two of them are always on a court, as far as Saiki Kanpatsu no Kiwami is concerned. In this moment, standing like this, hand in hand without talking about tennis or partners, he can see every infinite possibility, narrowed down to two.

~

The bandages come off.

The doctor checks him thoroughly, and gravely informs him that although this was always a possibility, he’s sad to say the worst has happened.

Tachibana is at his side.

Chitose feels curiously light. Tachibana squeezes his hand.

For a few months, no one hears from him. Not even Shiraishi. His parents must, because he’s still fifteen, and they don’t call the police, but they don’t tell anyone where he is, either.

When he comes back, he’s sixteen, and he has a cane and knows how to use it. He withdraws from Shitenhouji High, but rumors circulate that he’s enrolled at the university instead, after passing all of the tests with flying colors.

Learning each others' bodies by touch is the least difficult thing. Chitose doesn't need his sight to make Tachibana purr like a cat in heat. Tachibana doesn't need the light on to make Chitose scream.

Tachibana wins tournaments. He never plays doubles. Chitose cheers him on, and no one wants to sit next to him in the stands when he starts telling everyone nearby how every game will end.

Tachibana blows out his knee at nineteen, after winning a Grand Slam. Chitose finishes his degree the same year. It seems natural to get an apartment together.

Chitose teaches Philosophy, not math, and has a feud with the music teacher next door. Tachibana takes a coaching position at Fudomine Middle School. Both of them get teased and scolded by the faculty for not being married.

So they get married.

Miyuki catches the bouquet, and gives it to An in disgust. She vehemently refuses to sit next to Tezuka Kunimitsu at the reception, but Chitose sees her talking to him at the punch bowl later. He has vague hopes for a romance when Tezuka touches her arm, but no, he’s showing her how to put more power into her backhand.

Chitose wins the Kansai NKH Cup for shogi. Much to his dismay, he does not get a cool nickname.

Tachibana finds a promising young player and coaches him to the Olympics. That player loses in the finals to Echizen Ryouma, and Tachibana puts his fist through a door. Chitose laughs until he can’t stand up.

A lot of Chitose’s classes are held outside. Parents murmur that he’s unconventional, but he does get results. There’s a rumor that if you miss too many of Chitose-sensei’s classes, he’ll curse you. Two of his students go on to become chess Grandmasters. Chitose listens to the matches on TV while Tachibana is cooking, and Tachibana complains that he’s spoiling the end by calling the winner before someone makes the first move.

“What’s the point in playing, if you already know how it’s going to end?” Tachibana demands, voice thick with Kyushu-ben, straddling Chitose’s lap, his hands in Chitose’s hair, their mouths wet and swollen from kisses.

“The game isn’t any less fun because you know how it’s going to end,” Chitose tells him seriously, and kisses him without any ghosts leaving impressions on his lips.

~

The bandages come off.

The doctor checks him thoroughly, and informs him brightly that the operation was a complete success, and his vision should return gradually over the next few days.

Tachibana is at his side.

Chitose sees him in 3-D for the first time in two years. His hair is longer than at U-17, but still less crazy than it was in middle school.

They can’t make it two days without jumping onto a court, laughing in wild exhilaration. Tachibana hits to both sides of his body, and Chitose returns them all. That night, they come together in a wild tangle of bodies, hungry and eager, and Tachibana fucks him until his head drops off the side of the bed, gravity shifting with every rough thrust of his hips. Chitose can barely walk the next day, deliriously happy, and Tachibana is more solicitous than when he was blind.

Chitose withdraws from Shitenhouji High. He and Tachibana win the Davis Cup as a doubles pair, then a Grand Slam, then the French Open, before they’re seventeen.

Chitose goes wandering in foreign countries. He gets lost in Shenzen at the WTA Finals, and shows up five minutes before they would have had to forfeit. Tachibana puts his fist through a door. Chitose laughs. They win anyway.

When they’re eighteen, some lucky reporter gets a photograph of the two of them kissing in Tachibana’s car. It’s a scandal. They lose a couple of sponsors, and aren’t invited to the next Grand Slam because of it. Tachibana’s mom stops talking to them. Chitose remarks wryly that if they really wanted to scandalize the world, they should just release a sex tape. Tachibana swings, misses on purpose, and Chitose pouts that he’s violent.

Times change. More sponsors show up. As soon as they’re allowed to enter competitions again, they win, more deadly than ever for the forced absence.

Tachibana picks out their house in Australia. He sets it up while Chitose goes wandering. Wandering is a culture in Australia, and Chitose feels right at home even if he doesn’t speak the language.

An and Miyuki do _not_ come and live with them. An gets married during college, and their mother unbends enough to invite Chitose and Tachibana to the wedding. Tachibana flatly refuses to scandalize the guests by flirting during the ceremony, but he does dance with Chitose at the reception, and gets into a fistfight with some punk friend of the groom who jeers at him. When the groom objects, An kicks him in the shin.

They never seem to get tired.

Of playing, diving for the ball, of hard and clay and grass courts, of pressurized balls, of hearing their names announced and the thrum of the crowd.

Of winning, of passing the Bryan Brothers in most doubles wins ever, of their names in the Hall of Fame, of TV interviews that Tachibana manages in English, translating for Chitose.

Of each other, each time their mouths meet feeling like the first time, like Chitose is drunk already from just one sip, like he could go on for ages if only Tachibana would keep holding him.

Someone holds a reunion party for Nationals, from when they were in middle school. It was a good year, and turned out a few who are still pros, even years later--Echizen Ryouma, Kirihara Akaya, Tezuka Kunimitsu, Yukimura Seiichi. A few others who played some tournaments in Japan before career or injury took them out of the circuit--Shiraishi Kuranosuke, Kite Eishirou, the Ootori/Shishido pair--attend as well, and most of them do a good job pretending not to be jealous. Most people are just there to reminisce and enjoy, and Tachibana can’t help but needle Chitose for that time he was so jealous of a fumbled handjob from Fuji Shuusuke. Chitose smiles. He'd still like it better if Fuji Shuusuke were dead for his forbidden knowledge.

Miyuki moves in with her college roommate, permanently. Chitose’s grandmother informs him that he and Miyuki should have switched bodies before birth, and he just shrugs, because he doesn’t feel like he should be anywhere or anyone instead of who and where he is right now.

~

Chitose sighs, and lets the visions go. “Yeah. I want you to say something now.”

“Why?”

“Because it doesn’t matter either way.”

So Tachibana takes his hands, leans down, and shyly whispers a few words into his ear. “ _I love you, Senri._ ”

Chitose thinks his mouth is going to hurt from smiling.

The doctor performs the procedure, and removes his bandages.

Tachibana is at his side.


	9. Chapter 9

A bonus: the absolutely incomparable @NVGS400 on Twitter has blessed this fic with amazing artwork and agreed to share it! I could not be happier. Please enjoy, as I am.

**Author's Note:**

> I first wrote a version of this fic several years ago, but my laptop was stolen and it wasn't backed up. I was so excited to hear that they're making a musical of New Prince of Tennis that I finally had to write it out again. Please enjoy, you wouldn't know it from my body of work but Two Wings is one of my top 3 Tennis ships <3


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